Reviews

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

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bonesandmountains's review against another edition

3.0

This is a 2.5 stars to me, but it gets 3 because the writing is good. It's everything else that didn't particularly convince me.

I knew nothing about this book when I started reading it and it took me a while to familiarize myself with the setting and the many characters who crowded these pages, but when the mystery of the Essex Serpent started to emerge, I was intrigued. I mean, a mysterious creature haunting a town to the point of hysteria and challenging its pastor's grip on his people and his own beliefs? And a woman coming from outside determined to unravel the mystery? It's an amazing premise! Except that it didn't quite deliver, or at least, not as I’d like it to.

The story follows Cora Seaborne, newly widowed and finally free to be herself and follow her own interests after years spent under the watchful eyes of an abusive husband. When she hears about a mysterious creature that is whispered to inhabit the Blackwater, she decides to move herself and her family to find out what exactly it is about. The book follows her as she meets and befriends Reverend William Ransome and his family, but it also follows several other characters and their adventures.

Come to think of it, this book is much more about relationships and how they change and develop than about the actually titular serpent. It must be said that the amount of themes this novel tackles is impressive, and maybe that's also why I had such a hard time getting into it: there are so many storylines and most of them have next to nothing to do with the others. Each character is driven by their interests and goals and they often lead them to take divergent pacts; this results in a story that often jumps from one setting to another, with some of them being far more interesting than the others.

Still, I got invested, especially toward the middle of the book. The writing is beautiful and has a way of enticing you and making you want to keep reading, if only to be enchanted by the prose. Besides, some of the characters are charismatic and I found myself curious to see where their paths would have taken them.

William Ransome is a beautifully written character; a man of faith, but not blind to science and logic, he has to face the fears and doubts of his congregation and deal with a monster made of mist and legends, against which he finds that he can do very little. He also loves his wife Stella very much, and when his friendship with Cora starts to morph into something different, he has conflicted feelings about it – a mix of guilt, and discomfort, but also acceptance and joy, that I found well explored. I also liked Stella very much and found her story fascinating, even though heartbreaking. Martha is another character I particularly liked; she's headstrong and opinionated and flawed, and doesn't let anyone dictate her path. At first, it seemed like her love for Cora (which was platonic and romantic at the same time) would have led her to stand at her side and disappear in her shadow, but it didn’t. She had her goals and it was clear very soon that she was her own person. I would have liked to see more of Francis, Cora's son, a boy who is most likely dealing with autism, with no one (or well, almost no one) being able to understand him and his thoughts, or even willing to try. The way he saw the world was so interesting and I enjoyed his interactions with Stella very much!

I wasn't particularly impressed with Cora herself, for a change. Sure, she is ... different. She cares nothing about her appearance and status and prefers to busy herself with her readings and fossils, and surely she is a person around whom things happen, but she failed to make an impression on me. She felt more like a collection of traits and relationships than an actual person, and the fact that basically everyone around her had a bit of a crush on her became almost frustrating at times.

In the end, I think that what convinced me less about the book is the fact that the different stories it tells struggle to come together in a meaningful way. To speak through analogies, as this book does, they are like threads that struggle to bind together into the tapestry they were supposed to make.

Now, is it a book I’d recommend? Maybe. As I said, it’s well written, and if it’s a novel about atmospheres and people having feelings about each other (and feelings that are messy and conflicting and usually more than just love or dislike) that you are looking for, then this might be the book for you. It does a good job thoroughly exploring the many relationships the characters form. But it’s hardly a book about a mystery and it never made me feel particularly afraid or anxious for the characters. The tension doesn’t really reside in the mystery of the Serpent, as much as it does in the relationships between Cora and Will, or Cora and Luke.

Which is fine, just … not quite what I was expecting. It just didn't work for me.

heyheatherelise's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

anaccfarinha's review against another edition

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3.0

moeax83's review against another edition

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1.0

This books was very hard to get into. It never picked up and was overall pretty boring. I had to switch to listening to it to finish. It was even hard to get through while listening. If it wasnt for a book club, I would have never finished the book.