The Essex Serpent | Sarah Perry

"The wonderful thing about being a widow is that, really, you're not obliged to be much of a woman anymore."

    This book was very hyped all over the book community a couple of years back. I remember seeing it everywhere, with amazing reviews. So, I decided to try it out too, convinced that I was going to be blown away. The cover was also very enchanting and I was in the mood for a little mystery. But, when I finally got around to reading it I was disappointed and stopped at around a quarter through. I haven't picked it up in over two years. But now, as I've set myself the  task to read all the books I own I've forced myself to trudge through it. And what a chore it was. 

"I am so bored of the etiquette of death!"

    There was no plot to be found anywhere, just random threads that clashed and did not fit together. It covers eleven months, January to November of 1893. It is divided into four parts, and then each month is marked as we go along. The premise of the novel was attractive but it simply did not deliver anything I was expecting. It tries, and fails, to be too much - the story of supernatural, a religion vs science exploration, a romance and a feminist story. It's too many disparate parts that try to fit together but, predictably, fail. Many things mentioned are not integral to the story, they just feel like nods to the author's knowledge of the subject - see how much I know about the Victorians type of thing. The setting was vivid, especially the countryside where most of the plot is unspooled, but the characters not so much. The insistence on telling us every time Cora wore men's coats was odd. OK, we get it, she doesn't want to be feminine, do we have to be reminded on every other page?

    The protagonist, such as it is, of the story is Cora, a London widow who is ecstatic her abusive husband is dead. She'd married him at nineteen, full of hope and naivety, even though he actually told her he was going to break her and build her back up ("What a thing it would be to have me break you, and mend your wounds with gold."). I suppose she thought that was somehow romantic? She thinks back on her marriage with mixed feelings - she is relieved her tormentor can no longer reach her, but she also feels desolate for she cannot fathom who she is without him to steer her along. She describes herself as plain, dresses in men's clothes in order to conceal her femininity for it has brought her nothing but pain (aka "marriage sucks"). She is interested in natural sciences and collects fossils, wants to be seen for her intellect not her beauty, meager as it is. 

    Her son, Francis, is a peculiar child of eleven who collects items and has a lot of rituals, counting to soothe himself, always carrying on of his talismans on his person. He does not look at the world the way people do. Everything is a puzzle to figure out, he has no use for or understanding of feelings. He is not tender, he never allows his mother to touch him. His father's death barely registers with him, his relationship with Cora is nonexistent. With a modern perspective, we can figure out that he suffers with some form of Autism. Frank is an unnerving character and his plot is bizarre.

"I've never known her happier, though sometimes she remembers she ought not to be, and puts on her black dress, and sits in the window looking like an artist's idea of grief."

    There is also Martha, Frankie's nanny and Cora's companion. She is very possessive of Cora, to an uncomfortable degree, and there seems to be an undertone of an LGBTQ relationship there, but it is never explored. Martha and Cora frequently share a bad and Martha always seems to e touching and hugging Cora possessively. The whole this is muddled and made me uncomfortable. Martha is also a socialist and there is a plot thread where she uses a wealthy man's infatuation with her to get better housing for London's poor.

    The London crew is completed by Luke, a surgeon who is in love with Cora. He was her late husband's doctor and fell for her as he watched her caring for the monster. Her best friend Spencer, a wealthy and kind man, carries a torch for Martha which she knows and exploits to her own use. There's a whole story about the poor neighborhoods there that also includes Edward, a man stabbed by a colleague and saved by Luke, and the Ambroses, the mutual friends that connect all the characters.

    And of course, there are the Ransomes. Will, the priest, the boring and philosophical hypocrite. He is affectionate with his wife and children and that is all well. But his thoughts are all about religion - understandable - and since I am not one of his sheep it was just annoying. His wife Stella is some sort of wood sprite that is beautiful beyond compare and kind and understanding and perfect. The she gets tuberculosis and he gets infatuated with Cora, despite preaching all the time about god and how blessed he is and how much he loves his wife. Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. Their kids are there too, but only Joanna has some sort of a storyline of becoming a conceited primadonna.

"Each was only second best: they wore each other like hand-me-down coats."

    What little story there is goes as follows: 

• The people of Aldwinter, William's parish, go crazy thinking these a monster in the Blackwater, the fables Essex Serpent that is come to punish them for their sins. Anything that happens in this year is blamed on the creature and Will has a tough time of trying to reason with them. Cora's interest is piqued as she is hoping to see a new or forgotten species, but the whole thing ends up in disappointment. I had hoped this would be the main plot, the mystery of the novel but it was not. I dare say Cora was also meant to be the Serpent, sent to Aldwinter/Eden to seduce their priest. 
• Stella Ransome gets tuberculosis and spends most of the novel obsessed with color blue - collecting it, wearing, writing in it. She is very morbid and strange. Also, her death would come just as a convenient excise for Will to lust over another woman, despite professing his love for his star all the time. She raves a lot about the Serpent.
• The Edward Burton thing is also crammed in there and has no connection to the main plot. Martha's socialism and exploitation of Spencer's feelings for her get a new high here. Burton's would be murderer ruins another man's life in his quest to kill his target. The reason he hates him is a prank and somehow all his hatred for anything and anyone is poured toward this one goal. I don't know, this could have many been an interesting story on its own.

"She began to gather herself piece by piece, beginning at her feet, which she set a little further apart on the floor, and ending with her hair, which she brushed away from her face as if to show off her newly acquired resolve."

• Martha hates Luke for his feelings to wards Cora. Luke hates Martha for the same reason. The both of them hate Will with whom she appears to be growing closer. I wasn't able to understand this infatuation with Cora as she is neither beautiful nor particularly engaging. Her interest in science is a fad and it is quite obvious she just wants admirers but is not willing to promise them anything in return. She doesn't even feel bad for her "friend" Stella with whose husband she is obviously flirting and doing something more in secret. They all kind of end up hating her, though, so at least that's satisfying.
• There's also an invalid beggar, Thomas, who features quite heavily despite not having anything to contribute to the novel. I truly cannot see the point of him...
• In the similar vein, there is Banks and his daughter Naomi, Joanna's friend until the priest's daughter decides she's too elegant to hang out with such rabble. There's an uncomfortable scene in a pub where the girl seems to be groped by drunk men but that is left vague and never mentioned again. She then runs away because of her fear of the Serpent.

    As you can see, there are many threads ad elements that just didn't work for me. The prose was beautiful but distant, cold, and made me simply not care for any of the characters. I'd be the happiest of the Serpent had just eaten them all, wretched creatures as they are. The plot was nonexistent and became episodic, concentrating on one character per chapter. Cora and Will's discussions on faith vs reason were very boring and formulaic, predictable, so that didn't add anything to the overall story. The concentration on the housing crisis reads like a social commentary. But then there are description of medial procedures at the time too. I'm finding it hard to figure out the purpose of this story - was it just a love triangle in a new setting? The novel just seems to be struggling to figure out what it wants to be. The Victorian setting was a bit meh as well - it's like Perry tried to hit each item on the checklist of what constitutes such a novel (science vs religion, industrialization, social class, progress, the feminist issue) without exerting care into making it all fit together as seamlessly as possible.

    In the end, what can I say except that I really disliked this book. The only thing going for it are the descriptions - it was well done and you were always rooted in the place where the action was happening. The plot, however, was pure nonsense. I know there are people who rave about this book - that is the reason I bought it after all - but I would never recommend this to anyone. It was such a chore to slog though and I felt as if I was reading one of the boring novels assigned by my send year Literature professor in university. Thankfully, it's over, though I'll never get my money or time back.