Essex Serpent (Perry)

The Essex Serpent 
Sarah Perry, 2016 (2017, U.S.)
HarperCollins
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062666376


Summary
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.

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. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1979
• Where—Chelmsford, England, UK
• Education—Ph.D., Royal Holloway University
• Currently—lives in Norwich, England


Sarah Perry is an English author. She has had two novels published: The Essex Serpent (2016) and After Me Comes the Flood (2014). Perry was born in Chelmsford, Essex, into a family of devout Christians who were members of a Strict Baptist church.

Perry grew up with little, if any, access to contemporary art, culture, and writing. She filled her time with classical music, classic novels and poetry, and church-related activities. She says this early immersion in old literature and the King James Bible profoundly influenced her writing style.

She has a PhD in creative writing from Royal Holloway University where her supervisor was English novelist and poet, Sir Andrew Motion. Her doctoral thesis was on the Gothic in the writing of Iris Murdoch, and Perry has subsequently published an article on the Gothic in Aeon magazine.

I wrote about the power of place in my PhD thesis, particularly the importance of buildings in the Gothic (a genre which I find myself inhabiting without ever having meant to). Fiction in the Gothic inheritance makes much of the potent importance of the interior, from the castle where Jonathan Harker finds himself holed up to Thornfield, and from the suburban homes in Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black to the ghastly crypts in The Monk.

Recognition
Perry's second nove, The Essex Serpent, was nominated in the Novel category for the 2016 Costa Book Awards and was named Waterstones Book Of The Year 2016. It was placed on the long list for the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. In 2013 she was a writer in residence at Gladstone's Library. She won the 2004 Shiva Naipaul Memorial prize for travel writing for "A Little Unexpected," an article about her experiences in the Philippines. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/12/2017.)

Book Reviews
Sarah Perry ‘s exquisite novel evokes of the best of 19th-century fiction — descriptive power, lush imagery, and vivid characters, especially females. The spirits of Austen, Bronte, Dickens, Hardy, and Eliot are alive and well within its pages.… It was hard to close the cover of The Essex Serpent when I finished; I didn’t want — I don’t want — to leave its world of earthy smells and wonderful characters. Sarah Perry has written a breathtaking book (and won the British National Book Award for it), and I’m eager to see what comes next. READ MORE …
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers

Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent is a novel of almost insolent ambition — lush and fantastical, a wild Eden behind a garden gate. Set in the Victorian era, it's part ghost story and part natural history lesson, part romance and part feminist parable. It's wonderfully dense and serenely self-assured.
Jennifer Senior - New York Times Book Review


An irresistible new novel…the most delightful heroine since Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.… By the end, The Essex Serpent identifies a mystery far greater than some creature "from the illuminated margins of a manuscript": friendship.
Washington Post


Richly enjoyable.… Ms. Perry writes beautifully and sometimes agreeably sharply.… The Essex Serpent is a wonderfully satisfying novel. Ford Madox Ford thought the glory of the novel was its ability to make the reader think and feel at the same time. This one does just that.
Wall Street Journal


For originality, richness of prose and depth of characterization is unlikely to be bettered this year.… [O]ne of the most memorable historical novels of the past decade.
Sunday Times (UK)


Perry’s achieved the near impossible.…A thing of beauty inside and out …a stunning achievement.
Independent (UK)


Irresistible.… [Y]ou 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 (UK)


A Victorian-era gothic with a Dickensian focus on societal ills, Perry’s second novel surprises in its wonderful freshness.… [Her] singular characters are drawn with a fondness that is both palpable and contagious, all making for pure pleasure.
Observer (UK)


A suspenseful love story… The Essex Serpent recalls variously the earthiness of Emily Brontë, the arch, high-tensile tone of Conan Doyle, the evocation of time and place achieved by Hilary Mantel and Sarah Waters and the antiquarian edgelands horror of M. R. James.
New Statesman (UK)


Perry fully inhabits many of the concerns and stylistic elements of the 19th century novel — but its interests are still contemporary ones: desire, fulfillment and questioning the world… Her language is exquisite, her characterization finely tuned.… [I]t’s clear that Perry is a gifted writer of immense ability.
Irish Times


An exquisitely absorbing, old-fashioned page-turner.… The Essex Serpent is shot through with such a vivid, lively sense of the period that it reads like Charles Dickens at his most accessible and fans of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell will also find much to love.
Daily Express (UK)


[E]xcellent.… Like John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, whose Lyme Regis setting gets a shout-out here, this is another period literary pastiche with a contemporary overlay. Cora makes for a fiercely independent heroine around whom all the other characters orbit.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred Review.) The vivid, often frightening imagery …and the lush descriptions …create a magical background for the sensual love story between Sarah and Will. Book-discussion groups will have a field day with the imagery, the well-developed characters, and the concepts of innocence, evil, and guilt.
Booklist


(Starred Review.) [S]weeping 19th-century saga of competing belief systems.… The sumptuous twists and turns of Perry's prose invite close reading….  Stuffed with smarts and storytelling sorcery, this is a work of astonishing breadth and brilliance.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Many comparisons have been drawn between Sarah Perry’s writing and the Victorian novelists who were writing at the time the book was set, including Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Do you think this book feels Victorian, or contemporary?

2. "I'll fill your wounds with gold," Michael says. He means both literally that he will make sure Cora is financially comfortable during their marriage in exchange for the pleasure of hurting her, but also that he will remake her as something more beautiful and interesting than she was before. Cora survived her horrible marriage, but was definitely damaged by it. What do you think the seams of gold are in Cora’s character?

3. Many of the characters have unequal relationships: Cora and Martha, Spencer and Luke. Do you think that viewing someone as a means to an end necessarily precludes loving them?

4. Cora’s son, Francis, might today be diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. Despite his challenges, he gets a lot of pleasure from learning about the natural world. Eccentricity seems to have been more acceptable in the Victorian era, at least for men of a certain class. Do you think Francis would be happier in his time or in our own?

5. Will is at odds with the superstitious villagers, who insist the serpent is real, whereas he sees their conviction as a sign of their lack of faith. However, he is also wrangling with Cora, who is more interested in science than religious belief. And while Will is a minister of the established Church, he secretly reads Darwin. Do you think he believes faith is fundamentally rooted in the words of the Bible or a more personal encounter with the world?

6. When Francis asks Will what sin is, he describes it as falling short. When Will and Cora finally have their encounter in the woods, Will’s wife is still alive. How do you think Will would judge this incident by his own definition of sin?

7. Cora’s physical size and mannish habits of dress are frequently commented upon by other characters in the novel. She rejects a lot of society’s expectations of her as a woman, whereas Stella Ransome is the living embodiment of the perfect housewife. Despite their differences, they are friends. What do you think Perry is trying to tell us by having Cora save her rival instead of quietly letting her drown?

8. Cora sends her angry letter to Luke at a terrible time — it arrives as all his other hopes are being dashed. If this unfortunate coincidence hadn’t taken place, would we still read the letter as cruel? Should she have expressed her thoughts more kindly or was she right to be angry?

9. One of the subplots of the novel is the disappearance of Naomi Banks. She and Joanna Ransome argued and Naomi ran away. By the end of the novel, she has returned and Joanna is trying to cope with the imminent death of her mother. Do you think they will become close friends again, for good, or are the differences between them simply too great?

10. The novel sets up Cora to choose between two men and in the end she chooses neither. Do you think this is a comment on traditional literary plots? Do you think the novel sees friendship as more valuable and enduring than romantic love?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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