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Sy Montgomery on The Soul of an Octopus
Montgomery discusses what drew her to octopus consciousness and the individual octopuses behind the book.
Quick facts
Memoir
The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood
Montgomery’s bestselling memoir about Christopher Hogwood, a runt piglet she and her husband adopted and raised for fourteen years until he grew to 750 pounds and became the unofficial mayor of their small New Hampshire town. The book uses the pig’s life to explore community, friendship, and what it means to really pay attention to an animal most people only think of as food.
This is the book that established Montgomery’s method: total immersion in the life of one animal, written with warmth but never condescension toward either the creature or the reader. It’s funny and unexpectedly moving, and it’s the book most people mean when they say they love Sy Montgomery.
Science · NatureOn my shelf
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness
Montgomery gets scuba certified in her sixties to study octopuses in the wild after growing close to several at the New England Aquarium, including one named Athena. The book explores octopus intelligence and personality — a form of consciousness that evolved entirely separately from vertebrate brains — while telling the emotional story of Montgomery’s individual relationships with specific octopuses.
A finalist for the National Book Award, this is Montgomery at her most scientifically ambitious: octopus cognition is genuinely strange and hard to convey, and she manages it without either oversimplifying the science or losing the reader in it. The relationships she forms with Athena, Octavia, and Kali give the book real emotional stakes most animal-behavior books lack.
Memoir · Animals
How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals
Montgomery structures her own life story around thirteen animals who shaped her, from a childhood dog to the tarantulas, octopuses, and pigs she’s written whole books about elsewhere. Each chapter uses one animal to illuminate a different lesson she learned about love, loss, or how to live.
This is the closest thing to a Sy Montgomery reader’s companion — a way of seeing her decades of immersive fieldwork as one continuous life story rather than a series of separate books. It works well both as an introduction for new readers and as a retrospective for people who’ve already read the others.
Frequently asked questions about Sy Montgomery’s books
From the bookshelf
“If I have a soul, an octopus does too.”
— Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus
For more writers who take animal consciousness seriously, browse the full shelf.
