Vivid story joins science and love

By Kurt Armstrong and ChristianWeek | August 18, 2010

Curiosity is the fictional account of the real-life Mary Anning, the early 19th century amateur paleontologist from Lyme Regis, England, and Henry De la Beche, a member of the scientific establishment who ended up with the credit for many of Mary's fantastic discoveries.

As a young woman, Mary sells fossils—called "curiosities"—to support her family, but curiosity is also what motivates her to search the cliffs of Lyme Regis for bigger fossils. Mary's life becomes tangled with Henry's when she single-handedly excavates a major fossil. Henry and Mary share a love for "undergroundology" and a powerful romantic attraction to one another.

Mary is such an admirable character: courageous, entirely guileless, hard-working, faithful to her family, insatiably curious; Henry is less likeable: driven by ambition, lust and the nagging demands of his meddlesome mother whose idea of a grave offence is that she should have to carry her own bag.

Although the attraction between Mary and Henry grows as they work together, both are bound by the rigid 19th century English rules governing class and gender. There is an atmosphere of superstitious Christianity that fears what it can't explain—the fossils are creations of the devil—but it's social class, not religion that complicates this love story.

Winnipeg author Joan Thomas has built a historical love story from the real-life details of Mary and Henry's lives. The story is rich and vividly detailed, which makes the pace a bit sluggish. But the images of Mary trudging out to the cliffs to excavate the icthyosaur fossil or selling her ammonites in the town market are still strong in my mind. The story, set in England two centuries ago, feels like a drastically different world. Most striking are the norms that govern the interactions of social classes; I wonder what strange features of our own era will become apparent 200 years from now.

I wasn't surprised when Thomas's excellent first novel, Reading by Lightning, was so well received and celebrated, and Curiosity is just as strong. I'm eager to see what she does next.