I missed Pelt's visit at the local library this summer and afterwards, kept
hearing about her book. Now that I've finished it, I wish I had read it earlier
and met the author.
A 30-ish screwedup young man in Modesto California had all but given up when his
aunt, who raised him, handed him a bag of his absent junkie mom's memorabilia. A
few photoes and a granduation ring sparked his fantasy of tracing down his
likely father, now a Seattle real-estate tycoon, whom he had never known he had.
Meanwhile, in Sowell Bay, Washington, an elderly woman (Tova) "with a curved
back and birdlike bones" was about to retire from the cleaning job at the local
aquarium and found an unlikely friend in Marcellus the giant Pacific octopus who
was smarter than any would give him credit for.
So there you have it. A troubled young man, a retiring 70-year-old lady, and an
octopus in a tank near the end of its life are the main characters of the novel.
According to a video, Tova was prototyped after Pelt's maternal kind but private
grandma with an unyielding streak of Swedish stoicism. The name of the senior
group, the Knit-Wit, was directly from her life. Ethan, the local store-owner
was created to be the antagonist who was not exactly a villain. All the major
characters were stuck and through friendship they became unstuck, the author
said (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL-HtTBnj_w).
The plot was simple and suspenses were baked in smoothly. I was thankful for the
tight-knit story line and it was a relatively easy read. I enjoyed the language,
however, very much! I knew most of the words and expressions but it was a thrill
to see vivid idioms carry out figures of rhetoric weaved in the flowing text to
build a delightful reading experience.
