The Essex Serpent - whole book (spoilers allowed) (Aug 2017)

[Hugh]

This topic is for those of you who have read the book to comment freely, spoilers are welcome here.
Note that I am not moderating this discussion but I thought it would be useful to start - if you feel we need any more discussion threads, feel free to say so either here or on the general thread - in fact there is nothing to stop any of you creating more (within reason)...

[Caroline]

I've just finished Part One and am really enjoying it, though not so much seems to be about the Essex Serpent so far, other than the fear, curiosity, and questions it creates!

What do the rest of you think of the characters? I'm curious to see how each of them will develop and what parts they'll play. Will Martha ever be cheerful about anything? Will Cora be forced to accept a divine presence? Will Will be forced to confront his faith? Will Francis ever want a hug? And, what will become of Dr. Garrett's infatuation with Cora? I'm not sure what it is about him, but I can't trust the man.

I'm eager to read on!

[LindaJ^]

Good questions Caroline! Martha will surprise you. Cora is Cora and perhaps my least favorite (not counting her deceased husband, who wins least favorite with no competition). Yes, Will is forced to confront his faith in a couple of ways. As to Francis, you'll just have to wait. And, Dr. Luke Garrett will turns out to be a most fascinating character and one of my favorites. He is, I think, perhaps the one you can trust the most! I was most impressed with how the author slowly developed him, showing his worst side first. Pay attention to Stella as she becomes a very interesting and pivotal character.

[Hugh]

Thanks Linda. I didn't want to say too much too early and now the book is no longer fresh in the memory. I agree with what you say about Luke and Stella. I did like the way Perry sidestepped the happy ending the book seemed to be heading for.

[Casceil]

I did not find Luke very appealing. I also did not consider him very trustworthy. At the point when he wanted to try a new surgical technique on Stella, the idea sounded horrifying, and Luke's assessment of whether it was a good idea was clearly colored by his enthusiasm for getting to experiment. Francis was an interesting character. He seemed pretty one-dimensional in the beginning, but he became more interesting as the book went on.

I have finished the book, and I found it somewhat uneven. The beginning seemed to drag. The second 100 pages was much more fun. The author seemed to be playing with ideas like "sin" and "hurt feelings." The stabbing of Edward Burton seems to have been motivated by hurt feelings. And then the school girls' hysteria, because Joanna hurt Naomi's feelings. At the half-way point in the book, I felt like interesting things were happening and developing. But then the book seemed to me to lose momentum. By the time I reached the end, I found myself wondering if there was a point to this book, and if so, what it was.

[LindaJ^]

Casceil, your thoughts on Luke are interesting. I think you are right that wanting to do new surgical procedures was key for him but I liked that he always curtailed his enthusiasm by telling the patient or patient's representative that he could not guarantee the outcome. And Stella so appreciated him treating her - the patient - as an equal with her husband. I thought he was honest.

I agree the author was playing with the idea of sin. I'm not sure about "hurt feelings." The "sin" idea was obviously played in the Will/Cora relationship. I thought the point of the book was relationships and the science versus religion theme and perhaps human fears versus both science and religion.

[Jill]

Casceil wrote: "I did not find Luke very appealing. I also did not consider him very trustworthy. At the point when he wanted to try a new surgical technique on Stella, the idea sounded horrifying, and Luke's asse..."

Casceil - You wrote that by the end you were wondering what the point of the book was. Clearly that is subjective, but for me I thought the book was exceptional in the way it explored conventional and unconventional ideas of love (a mother's love, love of a friend, and love of a partner/spouse). The character's all had their own journey of self discovery in the book, and I really enjoyed it. I do agree with you that it was a bit uneven and dragged at times, but overall I thought it was a wonderful journey.

[Casceil]

Jill, the way the book "explored conventional and unconventional ideas of love" was a high point. I enjoyed that as well.

[Peter]

I just finished it, and I am still bemused by how poorly the publisher's short description of the book matches the actual book. While Cora is the central character (but not necessarily the "main" character) because everything seems to rotate around her, Will is no more central than Stella, Martha, or Luke. Are we harking back to the days of cheap paperbacks where the editor writing the back cover text only skimmed the book? Or did they just think it was easier to sell a "forbidden romance" novel than one that was more complex and harder to characterize?

As for myself, I found the book a pleasant read, but felt it lacked a center. I think Cora was supposed to be the center, but she was too changeable and opaque, and not interesting enough to serve that purpose.

[Jill]

Hi Peter - I agree with you about the poor description on the book. I've had the ARC sitting on my shelf for quite a while, but I just didn't pick it up bc it sounded so ordinary. I ended up really liking it though. I thought the center was not a person in this case, but rather the place and the time and possibly the Essex serpent.

[Peter]

Primarily a novel of place, rather than primarily one of character? That's an interesting and possible interpretation. I think the serpent is something to tie the parts of the book all together rather than its center, though.

[LindaJ^]

Interesting thoughts all. I like Peter's description of the serpent a the "tie that binds." It works for me except with respect to Cora's despicable dead husband but I may have forgotten something that pulls him in. I think the novel was about place with respect to the more rural parts of the story. I think it might be a bit less about place with respect to London, other than for class of society.

[Hugh]

The UK paperback has an interview with Perry as an appendix. This is four pages long, so I'll quote it selectively to save my fingers:

"I really wanted to portray the county as I know it - a place of strangeness and beauty. I must have come across the story of the Essex earthquake of 1884 at some point while researching the history of Colchester ... I was immediately struck by it because it seems such a very unlikely event to happen in Essex, which is not generally held to be a place of natural wonders and danger!"

"I have always been particularly interested in how faith and science sit together. My parents - along with many people I have known - are Creationists, but also extremely intelligent and educated people" ... "I suspect that these days there's a popular belief that faith and reason are in absolute opposition, but this isn't my experience of either faith or reason. But there is I think a struggle - and so much of the book looks at this struggle and whether it can ever be resolved"

"Aldwinter is not a real village, but I suppose it's an amalgam of many little Essex villages I've visited"
"We passed a sign to the village of Henham-on-the-Hill, which is where the Essex Serpent was first seen... He [my husband] asked me if I knew about the legend... when he told me I knew at once that I had the bones of a plot - the rural vicar, and the amateur naturalist down from London with her strange son."

"My ambition as a writer is - more than anything else, I think - to give joy and pleasure to readers; to convey to them the love I feel for my characters, and the places they walk, and to have them feel what my characters feel."

[Casceil]

I like the idea of this as a novel of place. Looking at it in that light, I appreciate it more. I think the last paragraph of the interview Hugh quoted fits with that.

[Neil]

I also particularly like the final paragraph Hugh has quoted. When I read this, I was on holiday and it was perfect to read there. I didn't think about it a lot, I just enjoyed the "joy and pleasure" I got from reading a good story. Of course, it helps that I liked the writing style - that's a big part of the joy and pleasure.

I think also that Perry did a good job of introducing things about the Victorian age that we wouldn't normally consider very Victorian. In the notes at the back, she refers to a book she used called "Inventing the Victorians" which is described like this: "Suppose that everything we think we know about 'The Victorians' is wrong? That we have persistently misrepresented the culture of the Victorian era, perhaps to make ourselves feel more satisfyingly liberal and sophisticated? What if they were much more fun than we ever suspected?

[Kay]

I did not like this book very much. I loved the writing, which was what kept me going, but I found the story too disjointed, and did not buy the motivations of some of the characters - Will, in particular. I didn't have a problem with Cora as some of you had, but found Martha's semi-marriage at the end to come out almost out of left field - we didn't meet Edward until midway of the book. Stella was too much of a martyr for me - and the glimpses in her diary felt completely unnecessary.. Francis was a vey well fleshed out character and it was refreshing to see an autistic (?) child be portrayed with such tenderness. I quite enjoyed the discussions between Cora and Will on faith and science and would have liked to see more. In any case, this turned out not to be my type of book...

[Lucy]

I’m interested in Peter’s perception that the book has no centre – I felt the same. It reminded me of a sleek version of a late Victorian novel – not as densely populated or ‘crammed with incident’ (as the Guardian reviewer seemed to think it was) but certainly emphasising interwoven lives, rather than a single subjectivity. Some characters with potential were comparatively underdeveloped (Martha, for example, or Luke), and at times this decision seemed a bit artful, as though our loosening grip on the character was designed to prove the importance of larger patterns and forces. Given the relationship between religion and science in the book, it seems that what can be known (and how it can be known) is a central concern. In that respect the fact that different readers gravitate towards different characters seems fitting. I loved the writing, and the mood, of the book, though I wanted more psychological depth at times.

[Marika]

Thanks Neil for the focus on Perry's introduction about contemplating Victorian life. The book really does seem to be an imagined snippet of Victorian life and that's it. I can't see looking beyond that, and frankly it's not going to be a most memorable novel for me. The topics between religion and science, the ego of the surgeon, freedoms of being a widow, and how does a child on the spectrum survive the era, tend to just meander through the pages with no real focus. I think I've been trained to look for themes that make me go back and assess my own values. This book doesn't for me. I don't think it's intentions are to make one think beyond "what if there were people like this in Victorian society; how would their day-to-day life look?"
That being said, there are some nice sentences and descriptions and seamless movement between narrations of a skillful writer that may be worth admiring. But I don't have much emotional investment for any character's situation. I have nothing against Cora's character; I'd probably be friends and just as curious about dinosaur bones if she existed. However, without much struggle, I am not going to be too interested in rereading passages to note nice writing. I need conflict! (Or some vengeful strife--I'm always up for some strong retribution).
Finally, I still have to get through about a third of the novel, but wanted to check in and see if the plot goes anywhere, and based on comments so far, it doesn't. The book reminds me of slogging through Tolstoy. I've been attempting to read closely to find unifying themes or even a conflict on which to cling. Nope.

[Janice (JG)]

Neil wrote: "I also particularly like the final paragraph Hugh has quoted. When I read this, I was on holiday and it was perfect to read there. I didn't think about it a lot, I just enjoyed the "joy and pleasur..."

That's exactly how I felt about the story. It was a very entertaining read with elements of mystery and unrequited love and the supernatural and odd children, et al. I had never known about the blue lights / clouds in the night, or about the reflecting clouds and ghostly illusions, or about spes pthisica and tuberculosis. I understand Stella's obsession with the color blue was inspired by the poet Maggie Nelson's Bluets.

I liked that Francis/Frankie was a character, it made me wonder how parents coped with autism before it was ever diagnosed or named. I liked that Cora blossomed as a liberated woman, and that Martha was possibly bi-sexual or lesbian or asexual. I really liked the whole political issue with the projects and slums of London, especially after the recent high rise fires in London and the latest scandal about slumlords and their buildings there. I didn't care much about the science vs religion debates between Cora and Will, neither of the arguments were very strong or very convincing, and I thought it was just an excuse to spend time together.

I sort of flashed in and out of the time period (1890s), sometimes it seemed it could be Victorian, but most of the time it did not... most of the time it felt like it could have been modern but rural and small townish, and definitely English.

Overall I really enjoyed it, the writing was a true pleasure to read and the story was enchanting. I had nothing invested, but I was glad that the story was left open-ended about Cora and Will.

[Hugh]

[off topic - I see that Kirsten, who nominated this book and was supposed to be moderating the discussion, has no GoodReads activity at all since mid-July - I hope she's OK, but in the meantime I think the anarchic cooperative is working quite well...]

[Ernie]

I really enjoyed the book, and honestly, it took me by surprise. I agree that there wasn't much action, but I didn't mind that. I did love the language, which I thought was beautiful, but ultimately, I think the beauty of the book is in the subtle way Perry was able to drive the story without so much action. I'm in agreement that the description of the book doesn't quite match the story, but I didn't really remember the description as I was reading.

Both science and religion were at such an interesting time around the turn of that century, and I think Perry's depictions of science and religion through the characters were fascinating. It's subtle, but the way she weaves the mysticism of the Victorian era and the period of time following the "Age of Wonder" and the acceleration of science from that I found to be quite engaging.

But for me, it was more than science and religion. It felt more about division and separation (maybe diametrical opposites in a way, but not quite), or rather the things that divide us and confronting them. Rationalism/mysticism - individualism/collectivism - science/superstition. The differences in beliefs and people. I like the idea that others have mentioned, that it is a novel of place and ideas more than anything else.

[Caroline]

I love the idea of this novel being about place and would add that it also captures a specific mood. I enjoyed each section very much though it was frustrating at times when it seemed as though the plot was pulling us somewhere only for us to be pulled over to another character with a separate narrative happening. Once I let go of that, I decided to simply let the pages take me in and get to enjoy individual moments throughout the book.

I liked almost all of the characters and wouldn't mind spending more time with them. I'd love it if the story were continued in Victorian-style episodic installments.

[Hugh]

There is some overlap here with debates I have been involved in elsewhere about how we assess the relative merits of books on the Booker longlist. There are at least five criteria that different readers prioritise differently: language, plot, underlying ideas, originality and characterisation, to which we could might add other things like imagination, observation, authenticity (etc.). I have never worried too much if one or more of these is weak, and like Ernie and Caroline I was happy just to go with the flow and very impressed overall.

[Nastasya]

Did anyone else read Perry's first book, After Me Comes the Flood? I was so disappointed in its final quarter, I didn't really want to read this one. But I quite liked this one. More actually happened in the first section or two than in all of her first book. I also enjoyed the different points of view.

Perry has a unique style, I think, for our time. Her style is more classical, as people have mentioned, and that doesn't bother me at all, although it's a little surprising. As a contemporary writer myself, I tend to edit things down so that readers can get inside characters' heads, so that I 'show don't tell,' whereas she is allowed to explain at length what a character is feeling and thinking. The effect, to me, is somewhat paradoxical: we *know* what her characters feel, because she's told us, but we don't really feel it ourselves. She creates distance between us and the characters. I suspect that's why some people don't get into the book so much.

[Hugh]

I read After Me Comes the Flood a couple of years ago and I agree that it was flawed, but I did think the atmospheric elements were very strong. It did feel unresolved.

[Beverly]

Sorry to be being late to the discussion but hopefully with summer being over I can keep to a schedule. :)

I agree that there did not seem to be much of a "plot" but I think that may be one of the charms of this book. I felt like this was viewing in on the characters' daily life and how they went about what was "normalcy" to them and how they dealt with the unexpected events in their lives.

Overall I enjoyed this story despite my initial reluctance to read this book. As I am a mood reader - maybe this was a book that I needed to read at the time I read it.

Thoughts I had recorded about this book:

A graceful ingeniously written historical fiction set in the 1890s Victorian England that delightfully simmers with suspense, and defying the known sensibilities of the times.
The mystery of the reappearance of an elusive beast, a cerebrally-minded young widow, and a compassionate vicar are the drivers that lead the reader into the conversations of science & progress vs superstition & belief.
While the beginning was a little slow for me, the intertwined complexities of the relationships made this an addictive read for me.
The beautiful cover foreshadows the awesome descriptive language of the landscape, along with the stellar storytelling drawing the reader into the world in which these characters live makes for an entertaining read.