The Fossil Hunter

There are some non fiction books that flow like a story. This isn't one.

I have two main grips with this book. The first one is that a lot of the information in this book only very indirectly relates to Mary Anning. A lot of time is given to discussions of paleontology, some of which is warrented to show how Mary's findings influenced the world. But Mary wasn't a part of those discussions, being a woman. Almost half the book is about various men and their differing opinions of fossils. It's not inherently uninteresting but It wasn't what I wanted from this book. A good portion of the book was also related to events surrounding Lyme Regis, again some of it is warrented as that's where Anning lived and made her discoveries. But did there need to be a whole chapter about a landslide that the book admits didn't really affect Mary? What about a random fire? Or taht the queen was there at some point? I understand there isn't much information about Mary Annings life, but rather than reading all that superfluous stuff I'd rather the book was just shorter.

The second point is the writing is really dull. One thing that was very distracting was how the author kept describing what Mary “must have felt” or “no doubt” has done. I know you can't read inside the mind of a long dead woman, there is no need to remind me that it is the authors assumption every second, alternatively the author could have just refrained from commenting on what Mary “no doubt must have felt, probably”. I just don't think Shelley Emling is a very good writer, a lot of sentences just sound awkward and she always sounds unsure of what she's saying even when she isn't “supposing” what is going on in Mary's mind.

Despite my problems I enjoyed learning what little there is to learn about Mary Anning and if you are interested in her life I'd recommend this, juts be prepared to do some skimming.