The Short Version
Today it’s the ending of Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt. And fair warning, this one is full of spoilers.
The short version: Cameron is Erik’s son, which makes him Tova’s grandson. Marcellus figures it out long before the humans do, steals back the proof, and gets one last swim in the sea. Let’s break it down.
The Setup
Quick reminder. Tova’s son Erik vanished in nineteen eighty nine, the summer after high school. His boat washed up with the anchor rope cut. Everyone called it suicide.
Cameron comes to Sowell Bay looking for his father, with a class ring and an old photo from his mother’s things. He’s convinced his father is a rich local developer named Simon Brinks.
Marcellus Knows
Marcellus has spent his nights collecting lost things around the aquarium, his Collection. One night he takes a key Tova dropped, and recognizes it. As a young octopus, he held a copy of that key on the seafloor, among what was left of a human body.
So he knows what happened to her son. And watching Cameron work beside her, he works out the rest. He even steals Cameron’s driver’s license and hides it under the sea lion statue, the one spot only Tova ever cleans, trying to tell her.
Tova’s What If
Tova does start to wonder. She sees Cameron’s birth date and does the math. He was born the February after Erik disappeared.
And she learns his mother was Daphne Cassmore, a girl from Erik’s class. But she tells herself it’s wishful thinking. She doesn’t believe in that kind of luck.
Simon Brinks
Cameron finally gets a meeting with Simon Brinks, at a tiny bar in a Seattle basement. Brinks tells him the truth: he and Daphne were only best friends. He’s not Cameron’s father.
And the class ring isn’t his. His is engraved with his initials. Cameron’s has four letters: E, E, L, S. Cameron reads it as eels, and has no idea what it means.
The Ring In The Eel Tank
Crushed, Cameron storms into the aquarium, throws the ring into the wolf eel tank, quits in a note to his boss, and drives off toward California.
Tova quietly pockets the resignation note before anyone sees it, because she doesn’t believe he’s the kind of person who quits.
Marcellus’s Last Trip
Marcellus is dying. A replacement octopus has already arrived. But he squeezes out of his tank one last time, slips past the wolf eels, the creatures he’s feared all his life, and digs the ring out of the sand.
On Tova’s final night of work, she finds him collapsed by the front door, barely alive, with the ring underneath him.
E E L S
She reads the engraving. E, E, L, S. Erik Ernest Lindgren Sullivan. It’s Erik’s ring. Cameron is her grandson.
She tells Marcellus: you knew, didn’t you? And she realizes he’d been trying to tell her all along.
Setting Him Free
Tova doesn’t put Marcellus back in his tank. She wheels him down the boardwalk in her yellow mop bucket, out to the end of the jetty at low tide.
She thanks him: he led her to her grandson. Then she tips the bucket, and he drops into the sea.
What Happened To Erik
The book never fully confirms what happened that night in nineteen eighty nine. But it gives us strong clues.
Erik was with Daphne. There was stolen beer. Years later, the paddle shop owner, Avery, remembers talking a troubled woman down from the pier, who kept talking about an accident, a boom. Tova pictures the sailboat’s boom swinging, hitting Erik, and knocking him overboard. It wasn’t suicide. It was an accident.
Marcellus Goes Home
Marcellus narrates one last chapter, called Day One of My Freedom. He sinks down into the deep, where, as a young octopus, he once found a key.
He’s going back to the place where he found that key, to lie beside what’s left of Tova’s son. The octopus who solved the mystery ends his life where it began.
Cameron Comes Back
Meanwhile, Cameron’s camper breaks down on the way to California. He fixes it himself, and halfway there, he turns around. He’s going back to do things the right way.
He shows up at Tova’s door the morning she has to leave her house. She gives him the ring and tells him his father’s name. For the first time, both of them have family.
The Dala Horse
In Erik’s old bedroom, Cameron spots a floorboard that doesn’t match. Underneath is a hiding spot, and inside is a little painted wooden horse, Tova’s Dala Horse, which Erik had broken and secretly glued back together.
It’s a small, perfect detail: proof that Erik was the careful, loving son she remembered.
After All
A month later, Tova has given up on the retirement home. She’s in a condo on the water. Cameron is working construction, planning community college classes, and seeing Avery all the time.
Tova volunteers at the aquarium, talking to the new octopus, Pippa. She paid for a bronze octopus statue out front. And on the pier, she whispers to the bay that took both her son and her friend: I miss you. Both of you.
My Verdict On The Ending
I love it. Yes, you see the twist coming, but the point isn’t surprise. It’s watching Tova finally let people in.
My only complaint is how neatly it all wraps up. Tell me in the comments: did you guess what E E L S meant? My review and the book versus movie video are linked below.
