The Essex Serpent
Ratings30
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings30
Average rating3.5
"Costa Book Award Finalist and the Waterstones (UK) Book of the Year 2016." "I loved this book. At once numinous, intimate and wise, The Essex Serpent is a marvelous novel about the workings of life, love and belief, about science and religion, secrets, mysteries, and the complicated and unexpected shifts of the human heart--and it contains some of the most beautiful evocations of place and landscape I've ever read. It is so good its pages seem lit from within. As soon as I'd finished it I started reading it again."--Helen MacDonald, author of H is for Hawk. An exquisitely talented young British author makes her American debut with this rapturously acclaimed historical novel, set in late nineteenth-century England, about an intellectually minded young widow, a pious vicar, and a rumored mythical serpent that explores questions about science and religion, skepticism, and faith, independence and love. When Cora Seaborne's brilliant, domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one. Wed at nineteen, this woman of exceptional intelligence and curiosity was ill-suited for the role of society wife. Seeking refuge in fresh air and open space in the wake of the funeral, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex, accompanied by her inquisitive and obsessive eleven-year old son, Francis, and the boy's nanny, Martha, her fiercely protective friend. While admiring the sites, Cora learns of an intriguing rumor that has arisen further up the estuary, of a fearsome creature said to roam the marshes claiming human lives. After nearly 300 years, the mythical Essex Serpent is said to have returned, taking the life of a young man on New Year's Eve. A keen amateur naturalist with no patience for religion or superstition, Cora is immediately enthralled, and certain that what the local people think is a magical sea beast may be a previously undiscovered species. Eager to investigate, she is introduced to local vicar William Ransome. Will, too, is suspicious of the rumors. But unlike Cora, this man of faith is convinced the rumors are caused by moral panic, a flight from true belief. These seeming opposites who agree on nothing soon find themselves inexorably drawn together and torn apart--an intense relationship that will change both of their lives in ways entirely unexpected. Hailed by Sarah Waters as "a work of great intelligence and charm, by a hugely talented author," The Essex Serpent is "irresistible. you can feel the influences of Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and Hilary Mantel channeled by Perry in some sort of Victorian seance. This is the best new novel I've read in years" (Daily Telegraph, London)"--
When Cora Seaborne's domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness. Seeking refuge, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex, accompanied by her son, Francis, and the boy's nanny, Martha, her fiercely protective friend. Cora learns of a fearsome creature said to roam the marshes claiming human lives. After nearly 300 years, the mythical Essex Serpent is said to have taken the life of a young man on New Year's Eve. Certain that the "sea beast" may be a previously undiscovered species, Cora joins local vicar William Ransome in investigating the rumors.
Reviews with the most likes.
This book was a pleasant surprise. I was thinking it was going to be pretty pulpy. But it wasn't. It's a gothic or mystery type novel. It has mystery and unraveling. It is a work that has elements of feminism and socialism which is a nice break from most Victorian-era novels. Which are mostly about modesty and puritanism.
Update: reread it in English. It was even better.
Some things I liked:
p. 24: “ Come tomorrow, if you like, to the grave. I said I'd go alone, but perhaps that's the point; perhaps we are always alone, no matter the company we keep.”
p.127: “Sometimes I think I sold my soul, so that I could live as I must. Oh, I don't mean without morals or conscience - I only mean with freedom to think the thoughts that come, to send them to go, not to let them run along tracks someone else set, leading only this way or that..' .... ‘I've sold my soul, though I'm afraid it didn't fetch too high a price. I had faith, the sort I think you might be born with, but I've seen what it does and I traded it in. It's a sort of blindness, or a choice to be mad - to turn your back on everything new and wonderful - not to see that there's no fewer miracles in the microscope than in the gospels!”
p. 216: “‘No such business', he said cheerfully. ‘I'm quite religious you know: no patience for the supernatural'”.
p. 343: “We've loved each other so long I've never been a man and not loved her. I can no more imagine life without her than without my own limbs. Who will I be if she is gone? If she is not looking at me - will I still be here? Will I look in the mirror one morning and find my reflection gone?
Some words I liked or did not now:
genuflect - kneeling in a religious manner (for a shrine or something)
auspicious - favorable circumstances
declivity - incline or gradient in height
beck - brook or stream
tincture - a trace or vestige
distrait - preoccupied
homunculus - a miniature human
caul - a portion of the enclosing sac of a fetus
shingle - beach gravel
This one kind of fizzled out for me. I was really into it until just past halfway, then I had to force myself to keep reading. I love the characters, the setting, the differing philosophies between those who love the naturals sciences and those who love faith. There is so much to like in this story - Francis is so weird yet charming, Stella in her blue bower, Cora and Will meeting over freeing a sheep from the bog. But past a certain point it just seemed like repetitions of things already talked about, with no strong finish.
Beautifully written novel of ideas set in the late Victorian era. London and Essex are convincingly evoked and the characters - well they are so perfectly what they are supposed to be that it is hard not to claim cliche, though they are they still drag you into the world. This book adhered to the necessary tropes of its genre so well, I laughed with joy. Just a lovely book in which not a lot happens in terms in physical action, but much life happens indeed. Recommended for folks who do not need wham bam boom books set in the 19th century.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. The premise sounded irresistible to me, yet even though The Essex Serpent had all the ingredients for a book I ought to love, I had a hard time warming to it somehow. Perhaps this was partly because the constant switching of perspective also made it hard for me to settle into the story. Certain threads and relationships were not developed as much as I would have liked, as the zigzagging plot kept dropping one to pick up another. I remained oddly distant from the characters, and sometimes had the sensation of being told rather than shown about their characteristics; they felt intellectually constructed out of era-appropriate ingredients (paleontology, anatomy, consumption, sexual repression, etc.) rather than spontaneously living.
Unsettling is definitely what The Essex Serpent is all about, though, so perhaps this is an appropriate effect. And at the end, suddenly, the characters came together in a way that surprised me, bringing them to life more vividly. If the book had gone on from there for another hundred pages or so, I might have felt more connected to it.
