The March meeting was held at Caroline’s but unfortunately
Sally and Christine could not attend.
Jan brought her sister-in-law Liz who participated fully having read The
Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry in two days.
The meeting was lively and it was agreed at the start that
we had all really enjoyed the book.
Sally had a few reservations.
Christine sent us a short description of the life and work
of Sarah Perry. The Essex Serpent is only a second novel.
Jan had written a little about the texture of the narrative
which she read to us and she had researched “very long fish” as the monster
which came up on the shore had seemed a little improbable! It could have been an Oar fish. Perhaps the improbability of certain aspects
of the novel added to the mystery and drew us all on to read the next chapter.
The Independent writes:
Set at the very end of the nineteenth century, the
Essex marshes become Perry’s Dover Beach, the setting for a three-way clash
between science, religion and superstition, three serpents entwined: the snake
of Asclepius coiling round its staff, that from the Garden of Eden, and a
mythical terrible beast, “a monstrous serpent with eyes like a sheep, come out
of the Essex waters and up to the birch woods and commons,” claiming human and
animal lives alike.
The Essex Estuary abounds with fearful rumours of
the latter, but Cora Seabourne – a young widow and aspiring Mary Anning,
recently arrived from London – is convinced it’s a previously undiscovered
“living fossil.” Meanwhile, William Ransome, the local vicar – a man whose
faith is one of “enlightenment and clarity,” not blood, brimstone and darkness
– is unconvinced by either explanation.
When it comes to historical fiction, Perry’s
achieved the near impossible; she’s created a novel and within it a world that
seems to have sprung complete and fully formed directly from the period in
question – a long lost fin-de-siècle Gothic classic – but her characters are as
enticingly modern as they are of their period.
Cora is about as far from a stereotypical Victorian
wife as one can imagine – unconcerned with looking pretty and in possession of
exceptional (“masculine”) intelligence – William as questioning as he is
devout, and the host of other characters with which they are surrounded are
pushing for welfare reforms and medical advances.
Each of whom is beautifully rendered – their
desires real and raw, and their pleasures and pains deeply felt. In terms of
contemporary comparisons, I was reminded of Sarah Moss’s Victorian-set
novels Bodies of Light and Signs for Lost Children: the two authors linked by period and a concern
with medicine, but also a similar masterful but understated command of their
subject.
Perry also showcases the most beguiling evocations
of landscape. “Colchester. Colchester! What is there at Colchester? A ruin and
a river, and web-footed peasants, and mud,” someone asks Cora. So much more,
Perry goes on to prove! For only a second novel it’s a stunning achievement,
one for which I predict prize nominations galore.
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