The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

I got off to a rather good start of reading for A Century of Books with the new year, then hit a snag when I had three days of complete fatigue, just sleeping with nothing else gonna happen! When I woke up from that, I realized that I not only did I need to start blogging about books but that I also need to keep reading. Also realized that I was very behind in my regular work of editing other folk’s writing so I didn’t feel I could start my own blog resurrection until I got a bit of that behind me. But I can dictate voice to text on my phone laying my bed so that is what I’m doing now in order to start my blog posts about reading. I think I’ll try go in order as I read them to get started (that didn’t last long).

The first book I read this new year was one my daughter had recommended to me this past summer when we were together, my 2016 entry, The Essex Serpent. I could hardly put it down. This historical novel set in the late 19th century is very beautifully written, with great characters who we get to see enough of to feel we have come to know. In, short, it is very compelling.

You meet Cora Seabourne when she is married to a brutal man, a member of society who abuses her horribly but has a stellar reputation outside of the home.

However, she is soon liberated when he dies and she is able finally to pursue her own interests in natural history and feminism. She leaves London with her son and his nanny, a confidante, and goes off to the Essex coast to find release in the wild lush, but open, space in the country. She loves nothing more than digging around in nature, searching for fossils, rejecting religion and superstition.

A rumor is being noised about that there a sea serpent living in the estuary, come to life after 300 years. She immediately rejects this and becomes sure in her mind it is an entirely new species which she is going to discover. A panic has arisen among the local populace as it is said that the sea serpent is claiming human lives and devouring them. The local vicar, Will Ransome, is doing his best to resist the panic and dispel the rumors, preaching that people have just lost true belief in the (Anglican) God they had espoused. 

Cora is invited to meet Will, through common friends, and receives an invitation from Will’s wife Stella to visit. Will and Cora meet and have an immediate attraction though they share almost no beliefs except their love for nature. “He felt his faith deeply, and above all out of doors, where the vaulted sky was his cathedral nave and the oaks its transept pillars: when faith failed, as it sometimes did, he saw the heavens declare the glory of God and heard the stones cry out.” For her part, Cora likes nothing more than to “grub in the mud,” finding

Essex has her bride’s gown on: there’s cow parsley frothing by the road and daisies on the common, and the hawthorn’s dressed in white; wheat and barley fatten in the fields, and bindweed decks the hedges. Cora has walked four miles and is not yet tired. At the fifth mile she passes a farmer stripped to the waist and unbuttons her shirt: why should her skin be disgraceful, when his is not? But there’s someone on the path, and she puts the buttons back through their slots: no sense courting disaster. She comes to a place where roses are grown for bowls and vases in dining rooms elsewhere; an acre or two of blooms laid out in colored stripes, as if bolts of silk had been dyed and left to dry. It scents the air; she licks her lips, and there’s Turkish Delight on her tongue.

Cora’s rejection of religion is a real source of contention, but Will writes to her, “I won’t accept that my faith is the faith of superstition. I suspect you despise me for it just a bit—and I know your doctor does!—and I almost wish I could deny it to please you. But it’s a faith of reason, not darkness: the Enlightenment did away with all that. If a reasoned creator set the stars in their place then we must be capable of understanding them—we must also be creatures of reason, of order!”

This book has everything you could want in a story (actually many stories because in addition to the main stories of Cora and Will, there are the stories of Cora’s son Francis, the nanny Martha and her friend Spencer who is also Luke, the doctor’s friend, the story of Stella who is dying of consumption and her daughter Joanna, all interesting in themselves). Part Gothic, part mystery, part theological reflection, part feminist tale, large part of romance--in short it is as close to perfect as it gets. I don’t want to give away any of the endings; but though I loved the book, I’m not sure that I liked THE ending. Well, in my life I am quite a realist, but my reading self is usually a romantic. But, I definitely loved the book and recommend it highly!