The Essex Serpent
from the Booker-longlisted author of Enlightenment
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3.6 • 230 Ratings
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
London, 1893. When Cora Seaborne's controlling husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness. Along with her son Francis - a curious, obsessive boy - she leaves town for Essex, in the hope that fresh air and open space will provide refuge.
On arrival, they hear rumours that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming lives, has returned to the coastal parish of Aldwinter. Cora, a keen amateur naturalist, is enthralled, convinced that what the locals think is a magical beast may be a yet-undiscovered species. As she sets out on its trail, she is introduced to William Ransome, Aldwinter's vicar, who is also deeply suspicious of the rumours, but thinks they are a distraction from true faith.
As he tries to calm his parishioners, Will and Cora strike up an intense relationship, and although they agree on absolutely nothing, they find themselves at once drawn together and torn apart, affecting each other in ways that surprise them both.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
From the author: “I was on a car journey with my husband in Essex and he told me that there’d been a serpent there in the 17th century. And this doesn’t happen very often, but I immediately thought, ‘Oh, what if it came back, and what if it came back in the aftermath of Darwin?’ I thought, ‘What if there was a woman from London, an emancipated widow, who thinks that it’s real? And then she meets someone, maybe a vicar, who’s very suspicious of this whole thing?’ It took about 45 minutes for virtually the entire novel to be in my mind. I remember actually vocalising it to my husband, and every now and then he would interrupt and I’d say, ‘Shush.’ I did what I usually do, which is nothing, for about a year. I just thought about it over the course of that year and visited Essex a lot. I researched things like cardiac surgery and the role of women in the 19th century. And then in 2015, I sat down and wrote it over 10 months. I wasn’t given a massive advance or a huge marketing budget. It’s not a situation where I got a phone call saying, ‘Darling, you’re going to be a star.’ It wasn’t that, it was just this quiet realisation that people felt that I had achieved something artistic. Nobody said, ‘This is going to sell loads of copies.’ They said, ‘You’ve written a wonderful book.’ Those are two completely different things.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Perry's (After Me Comes the Flood) excellent second novel, set in the Victorian era, recent widow Cora Seaborne leaves London with her 11-year-old son, Francis, and loyal companion, Martha, and goes to Colchester, where a legendary, fearsome creature called the Essex Serpent has been sighted. Scholarly Cora, who is more interested in the study of nature than in womanly matters of dress, tramps about in a man's tweed coat, determined to find proof of this creature's existence. Through friends, she is introduced to William Ransome, the local reverend; his devoted wife, Stella; and their three children. Cora looks for a scientific rationale for the Essex Serpent, while Ransome dismisses it as superstition. This puts them at odds with one another, but, strangely, also acts as a powerful source of attraction between them. When Cora is visited by her late husband's physician, Luke Garrett, who carries a not-so-secret torch for her, a love triangle of sorts is formed. In the end, a fatal illness, a knife-wielding maniac, and a fated union with the Essex Serpent will dictate the ultimate happiness of these characters. 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.
Customer Reviews
Great Book, Not so good tv adaption
Read the book, brilliant. I was transported on to the mist covered marshes. I can almost taste the salt in the air. The eerie shapes in the half light and the sounds of the night.
Great bedtime reading.
Great book! Really enjoyable read.
Only the Serpent Isn’t True
This is a remarkable book beautifully written and best of all nearly every character is a hero, not in the sense that of derring do but in the sense that each one is true to himself and especially herself. Each one is realised and defined, even children and minor characters so that this reader was engaged almost from the first page. It is textured and colourful, perhaps I am prejudiced because I knew someone like Cora and I loved them both