The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
The interest of Victorians in amateur fossil hunting brings Cora to a village on the Essex coast where the long, low tides have deposited remains for millennia. She has escaped London and the formal mourning expected after the death of her husband. Since she rarely had a happy day with him, her inappropriate smiles of independence need to be hidden away. In The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry opens a can of worms, and we watch them wriggle through many lives.
The Serpent has been seen, rather like the Loch Ness Monster has been seen. Fog often shrouds the coast, but the heaving of a dark, moaning form penetrates into the receptive minds of the villagers. One pew in the church is adorned with a carving of the Essex Serpent. Villagers know it has shining scales, huge wings, and a rapacious mouth with sharp teeth.
The pastor, Will, cannot change their fear. In ever greater numbers, they attend his services, even though they are severely disappointed in his refusal to cast Christian spells on the monster. He tries to reason with them, but what is reason in the face of instinctive knowing? Even his wife, Stella, believes in the spells of the Serpent.
A semi-invalid, Stella is wraith-thin, wrapped in an aura of blue. In a kind of bliss, she collects blue things – a notebook, broken pottery, stones, ribbons – and she surrounds herself with them in her bedroom. Will adores her, as do her three children.
Cora’s arrival brings an influx of London visitors, welcomed by her but not by the villagers, who consider them interfering socialites. In fact, they are an eminent surgeon, Luke, his friend, Spenser, who is also a doctor, another friend, Ambrose, and his wife, Katherine. On meeting Stella, the two doctors immediately recognize why Stella seems to be disappearing before Will’s eyes. She is. She has advanced TB. Resisting treatment, Stella must acquiesce to the removal of her children for their own safety, kindly taken into the family home of Ambrose and Katherine.
The interplay of these characters leads to knotty themes. Love is particularly difficult, because the borders of friendship and romantic love are so blurred. Love in marriage might include deep friendship, as it does for Will and Stella, but did not for Cora and her husband. Convention, faith, and fear sway attitudes. Events cause cascades of change and readjustment.
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