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bisha 's review for:
The Essex Serpent
by Sarah Perry
When I started reading Perry’s novel I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew there had been a hype around it when it was published but that wave kind of passed me by. I was in quite a deep fantasy phase and historical fiction didn’t really feature on my radar. So when I did eventually get around to reading it I was open to wherever it wanted to take me.
It was a slow start. The plot starts in 1893 with a widow, Cora, who is rediscovering herself and a doctor, Luke, that is besotted with her. In the early stages I thought I already knew how it was going to end and it wasn’t a journey I wanted to go on. Tangent: when I told my granny what I was reading her response was ‘oh yes I remember, that’s the one with the vicar’. Okay, so there was a vicar who featured prominently enough for them to be the identifying factor of the novel for my granny. I read on.
The vicar, William, is introduced when Cora encounters him in a marsh and mistakes him for some sort of countryside tramp or unkempt farmer. Here again I thought, ‘oh here we go’, a lively, newly-single lady of the town encounters a strong, rugged man, the very antithesis of the vicar she imagines, I wonder where this will go. Again, I was wrong, sort of.
One of my pet peeves is when I character (normally female but not exclusively) that I have come to admire loses their integrity for a man. I enjoy romance as much as the next person but a ‘they lived happily ever after’ at the expense of the woman’s personality grates. To be clear, I don’t believe this to be t true of every love story but there are enough that compromise hundreds of pages of character development by concluding with a two dimensional leading lady. Thankfully, that cannot be said to be the case with Perry’s Cora Seaborne. The romance is there, the will they won’t they suspense is there, the mutual, conflicted lust is there, but the character remains true. It is this that keeps me thinking about The Essex Serpent even now – the relationships.
The relationship between Cora and William develops as one might expect but slowly and honestly and ends, in my opinion, the only way it could. Martha, Cora’s confidante, is another excellent example of a female character who is unwavering in her morals and her politics. Yet, Perry carves the character with increasing self-reflection that exposes Martha’s hypocrisies and inconsistencies. Personally, I would enjoy a prequel or sequel focusing on Martha’s story as her development strikes me as all the more interesting. I base this on her working class background, political outlook and the relationship we leave her in that embraces love but rejects marriage – a 19th century taboo.
The whole of this novel I felt like I was waiting for something. In the beginning, this encouraged me to read on. By the end, I realised the anticipation was the whole point. Waiting for the serpent, for a death, for a relationship to blossom to the point of explosion. These phenomena resolved themselves without much ado but in their pursuit the novel found itself. For me, the Essex Serpent is a story of the mind, the serpent's reality is inconsequential and all the more intriguing for it.
It was a slow start. The plot starts in 1893 with a widow, Cora, who is rediscovering herself and a doctor, Luke, that is besotted with her. In the early stages I thought I already knew how it was going to end and it wasn’t a journey I wanted to go on. Tangent: when I told my granny what I was reading her response was ‘oh yes I remember, that’s the one with the vicar’. Okay, so there was a vicar who featured prominently enough for them to be the identifying factor of the novel for my granny. I read on.
The vicar, William, is introduced when Cora encounters him in a marsh and mistakes him for some sort of countryside tramp or unkempt farmer. Here again I thought, ‘oh here we go’, a lively, newly-single lady of the town encounters a strong, rugged man, the very antithesis of the vicar she imagines, I wonder where this will go. Again, I was wrong, sort of.
One of my pet peeves is when I character (normally female but not exclusively) that I have come to admire loses their integrity for a man. I enjoy romance as much as the next person but a ‘they lived happily ever after’ at the expense of the woman’s personality grates. To be clear, I don’t believe this to be t true of every love story but there are enough that compromise hundreds of pages of character development by concluding with a two dimensional leading lady. Thankfully, that cannot be said to be the case with Perry’s Cora Seaborne. The romance is there, the will they won’t they suspense is there, the mutual, conflicted lust is there, but the character remains true. It is this that keeps me thinking about The Essex Serpent even now – the relationships.
The relationship between Cora and William develops as one might expect but slowly and honestly and ends, in my opinion, the only way it could. Martha, Cora’s confidante, is another excellent example of a female character who is unwavering in her morals and her politics. Yet, Perry carves the character with increasing self-reflection that exposes Martha’s hypocrisies and inconsistencies. Personally, I would enjoy a prequel or sequel focusing on Martha’s story as her development strikes me as all the more interesting. I base this on her working class background, political outlook and the relationship we leave her in that embraces love but rejects marriage – a 19th century taboo.
The whole of this novel I felt like I was waiting for something. In the beginning, this encouraged me to read on. By the end, I realised the anticipation was the whole point. Waiting for the serpent, for a death, for a relationship to blossom to the point of explosion. These phenomena resolved themselves without much ado but in their pursuit the novel found itself. For me, the Essex Serpent is a story of the mind, the serpent's reality is inconsequential and all the more intriguing for it.