Can a Giant Pacific Octopus help you connect to your long-lost grandson?
This is one of those books I saw everywhere for a while when it first came out, and I’m not sure why I resisted it so hard. I think I assumed it was a nonfiction book, but I may have gotten it confused with a different book because this is definitely a novel, and I enjoyed it very much.
I listened to the audiobook, which has two narrators, one for the octopus, and one for the human main characters.
The octopus, Marcellus, has been in captivity in the Sowell Bay Aquarium. We know Sowell Bay is in Washington, about 2 hours away from Seattle, and it has to be on the coast, but other than that, we’re left to guess as to its exact location.
The first human we’re introduced to is Tova, a widow in her 70s who works nights cleaning the aquarium. She takes her job very seriously, so she’s not happy when she falls and hurts her foot and has to take some time off work. She leaves her boss very clear instructions to pass on to the person covering for her, whoever that might be.
It turns out to be Cameron, a 30-year-old man who’s kind of trying to get his life together, but he’s not trying very hard. He’s very smart and is easily able to remember things he’s read, but he can’t manage to remember to show up to work on time, which makes it hard for him to hold down a job. That makes it hard for him to pay his bills, and when his girlfriend gets fed up with him always playing the victim, she throws him out. Which he of course uses as just another excuse to play the victim. He keeps complaining no one will give him a second chance, but it seems pretty clear he’s been given plenty of chances and he hasn’t tried to make the most of any of them. He just assumes an endless supply of “second” chances is his right because his mom was an addict who left him at her half-sister’s place for a weekend and never came back.
While that’s a rough break, and his aunt clearly didn’t have much to give (she lives in a trailer park), it’s equally clear that she gave him everything she could. She loves him, cares for him, tells him he’s smart, loans him money when he needs it, but also calls him on it when he does stupid shit. He could have been dealt a much worse hand in life than getting raised by a good woman who loved him and made sure he had everything he needed.
Cameron is also wrapped up in the idea that his mom “abandoned” him, and therefore must not have loved him. I can only imagine what it must be like to live with that, but multiple people throughout the book try to point out to him how hard it must have been for her to leave him, and that it’s not like she left him to fend for himself on the street. She left him with a trusted family member she knew would take better care of him than she could. She did what she could to give him his best chance, and all he does is squander it.
Cameron has never been told who his dad is, and given his mom’s lifestyle, it’s unlikely she knew who his father was. But losing his job, his girlfriend, and his apartment all in one week somehow acts as the catalyst for Cameron to finally find out who his father is. He goes through some of his mom’s things his aunt had held onto for him and finds some photos and a class ring that presumably belonged to his father. He gets it into his head that his dad is a rich real estate developer living in Sowell Bay, so he flies out to find him.
It takes him a while to get a meeting with his “dad,” and in the meantime, he needs a job so he can pay his way. He ends up living out of a mobile home parked in the driveway of the Scotsman who owns the only grocery store in town. He starts out by asking him to give him a job at the grocery store, but they’re not hiring, and he doesn’t want to fire someone just so he can give a job to a kid who admits he has no intention of sticking around once he’s gotten in touch with his rich dad and forced him to pay all the child support he never paid when Cameron was growing up.
Instead, he hooks him up with an interview for a job at the local aquarium, but it’s only part time, and that won’t let him make enough money to pay back his aunt the money she gave him from her vacation fund before the last payment on her dream vacation is due. So Cameron begs his new boss for more work, and wouldn’t you know it? Their cleaning lady just had to take a leave of absence for a few weeks. So, in addition to the part-time gig, he can clean the aquarium at night.
He takes the job and manages not to fuck it up. It does throw him for a bit of a loop when he finds an octopus wandering around the aquarium. He tries his best to get it back into the tank, but the octopus is having none of it.
Fortunately, Tova shows up just in time. She’s struck up a friendship with the octopus, and she manages to coax him out of the corner so she can pick him up and put him back in the tank where he belongs just a few minutes shy of the poor octopus suffocating to death.
Turns out Marcellus has gotten tired of a diet comprised primarily of herring. He managed to find his way out of his tank and into the tank with the tasty crustaceans, then he makes his way back into his tank. Unfortunately, he does occasionally get caught in a tangle of wires lying on the ground or cornered by the new kid, at which point he risks suffocating before he can make it back to his tank.
Once Tova finds out Cameron has taken over her cleaning duties, she loses no time letting him know that there’s a right way and a wrong way to clean the aquarium, and they strike up an unlikely friendship.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say Cameron’s dad is not the rich businessman Cameron was hoping for. Cameron does, eventually, get to meet him. It turns out he was good friends with Cameron’s mom, but they were never romantically involved, and certainly never had sex.
The spoiler is that Cameron is Tova’s grandson.
Tova’s son, Erik, died in a boating accident when he was 18, although it’s not clear if it was an accident or if he committed suicide, especially since his body was never found.
Tova has been looking for answers ever since, but no one can give her those answers.
It’s not until she runs into Cameron after his disappointing meeting with his not-dad and she sees the class ring he throws away that things finally click for her. He says he was told the ring belonged to his dad and she notices the initials carved onto it are her son’s initials.
Tova wasn’t aware that her son was seeing anyone before he died, but I assume Cameron’s mom must have been in the very early stages of pregnancy when Erik went overboard. We never get to hear any part of the story from Cameron’s parents’ perspectives, so we can’t know for sure, but it seems like Erik had a good relationship with his parents, so it seems unlikely he wouldn’t have told them if he had been seeing someone and it was serious.
So, maybe it wasn’t serious yet. Or maybe it was just a one-night thing and neither of them ever intended it to go further than that. Or maybe she told him she was pregnant and the thought scared him so much he jumped into the ocean. That last one seems particularly unlikely, but hey, teenagers are notoriously impulsive and stupid, so I wouldn’t rule it out.
Whether or not Erik knew he was going to be a father isn’t the point of the story. The point of the story is Cameron and Tova finding each other and both of them growing as people and realizing things about themselves. Tova has to realize she’s not done living her life yet, and Cameron has to realize that he’s not destined to screw up his whole life.
I know octopuses are “remarkably bright creatures,” but I doubt they can learn to read, as Marcellus allegedly reads the placard outside his tank, telling everyone that Giant Pacific Octopuses tend to live about 4 years, or that an octopus is capable of realizing that one year is 365 days, which means 4 years is 1,461 days. Marcellus was young when he was captured, but he knows he’s been in captivity for 1,299 days at the beginning of the book, so he knows he doesn’t have much time left.
I also doubt octopuses are capable or even interested in noting the similarities between humans that act as telltale signs that we’re related … or not.
But I was willing to suspend my disbelief so Marcellus could help these two stupid humans realize their connection. I also loved his acerbic nature and better-than-thou attitude. It made me look forward to his chapters and sad that they were so short.
I loved this book by Shelby Van Pelt and I only regret it took me so long to read it.