The Octopus and I by Erin Hortle: book review

The Octopus and I (2020) is set on the Tasman Peninsula in rural Tasmania, Australia.

Written in three parts, it is about the developing relationship between Lucy and an octopus.

Lucy is an animal conservationist, researching cancerous facial tumours in Tasmanian devils, native marsupials of the region. She is recovering from major cancer surgery, and has been living with Jem, an abalone diver, for the past seven years.

Walking along the coast, Lucy sees two old women—Flo and Poppy—catching an octopus, which they do for a living to sell to local restaurants. Lucy becomes fascinated with octopuses—with their long limbs, dexterous suckers, large eyes, translucent ectoplasm, as well as their intelligence and shape-shifting abilities.

In Part Two, after an accident in which Lucy is nearly killed trying to save a pregnant octopus, Flo is helping Lucy with her knitting when Flo’s son Harry returns to his hometown permanently.

This is about a small fishing community. As Lucy learns more about octopuses, Jem too, when he dives for abalone, finds himself thinking more about the octopuses. But it seems to Jem that Lucy is more attracted to octopuses than to him. Or to Flo or to Harry.

Part Three is narrative from an octopus’s perspective and Lucy’s healing process.

The writing style is colloquially rural Australian, with an even blend of dialogue and evocative descriptive narrative, but also of cussing and cursing. It explores the natural world and human’s interactions within it that forms both mutual discomfort and mutual healing. With themes of love, loss, fear, hope, warmth, friendship, the power of talking-knitting-listening, awareness of self and body, and reclaiming the shoreline, it is also about cancer and coping with it.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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