strange and random happenstance

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Published by: Custom House
Publication Date: May 27th, 2016
Format: Paperback, 416 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

The death of Cora Seaborne's abusive husband means she can finally cast aside the shackles of the life she was forced into. She can indulge her desire to be the next Mary Anning. Taking her household, which consists of her companion Martha and her disturbed son Francis, to Colchester, she spends her days mucking about the countryside wearing men's boots and unflattering clothing looking for ammonites. Once she even tangled with a man trying to rescue a sheep from the muck. But soon Colchester is abuzz with rumors of the Essex Serpent. It's hunting the estuaries and killing children and pets. Cora doesn't believe in something so fanciful, but she does wonder, could a creature from long ago have survived in an out of the way place to be discovered in the present day? Might she find a living fossil? Science doesn't deny it is possible and her hero, Mary Anning, often hoped to make such a discovery. Cora longs to have her name next to such a find in a museum and therefore jumps at the opportunity that fate hands her. Through mutual friends she is introduced to the Ransomes who live in Aldwinter. As fate would have it the Reverend Will Ransome is the man she helped to rescue the sheep. Despite such an inauspicious beginning the two become fast friends. Cora is fascinated by a pew in his church which is carved to represent the serpent, while Will is incensed by his parishioners obsession with folk tales and threatens to destroy the pew. Will and Cora argue over everything, from religion to science, it is a meeting of true minds. Everyone comments on their closeness, Cora even moves to Aldwinter. Yet Will's wife Stella doesn't seem to mind, and Martha, well Martha has more important things to worry about. But then there's an incident at the school. Cora begs her friend, Doctor Luke Garrett, to come down and investigate the medical reason behind the hysteria. This causes a breach between Cora and Will. A breach that will be healed and ruptured on one fateful night. So while they might not survive, the question remains, does the serpent?

Yes, I fully admit to picking up The Essex Serpent due to Tom Hiddleston. Will Ransome is a role Hiddles was born to play in my mind. But I picked up the book a second time mainly because of that adaptation. Yes, The Essex Serpent was also picked for my book club, but I wanted to wade back into the world of Cora and Will, a world that the adaptation made seem so shallow and hostile. To have wasted such talent on taking a multidimensional book and making it so one-dimensional just infuriates me. Yes, the book is rather light on plot but The Essex Serpent is beautifully and lushly written and has so much substance. It fits more into the style of Gothic literature and romance from the 19th century than what we necessarily think of as Gothic now. The book is all about duality as epitomized by the word "cleave," to cling and to separate all at once. The serpent is both a supernatural entity and a rather large fish. Stella is both dying and luminous. The world runs on both religion and science. Cora and Will's romance is both everything and nothing. Two states of being happening simultaneously. This recurs over and over again, reality versus fallacy. And at one point, the hysteria of Aldwinter with regards to the serpent reaches such a fever pitch that the young schoolgirls act out in a way that would best be described as Salem in 1692. And the fact that the doctor swings in and brings up ergot poisoning made my dorky history heart soar! Because it could very well be hysteria OR ergot OR none of the above. The Essex Serpent is about the mysteries that science hasn't yet explained but even when they eventually are they are still magnificent. Look to the Fata Morgana that Will and Cora saw. They literally saw a ship with red sails sailing across the sky but it is just an optical illusion. Did knowing what it was make it any less amazing? No it didn't. But we go back to the duality of superstition and science, there are those that will meet wonder and invention with hostility and those who will welcome it with open arms. That is why Will is such an interesting character, while he will embrace an illusion in the sky and turn his flock from superstition he still won't embrace medical science. He is the essence of duality. A mystery that resides in us all and will keep me coming back to this book time and time again.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Aldwinter, Cora Seaborne, Fata Morgana, For the Love of Book Clubs, Living Fossil, Mary Anning, Reverend Will Ransome, Sarah Perry, Science, Superstition, The Essex Serpent, Tom Hiddleston

Scales and Sensibility by Stephanie Burgis
Published by: Stephanie Burgis
Publication Date: Octover 4th, 2021
Format: Kindle, 307 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

When her parents lost everything and promptly died Elinor Tregarth and her two sisters had to rely on the kindness of their relatives. But no one household could be expected to take on three penniless orphans so they were separated across the length and breath of England. Elinor ended up at Hathergill Hall to be a dogsbody to her cousin Penelope. Penelope under normal circumstances is hard to deal with, leading up to her debut she's a nightmare. She is making everyone, in particular Elinor, suffer. But Elinor never knew there'd be a breaking point but the tantrum Penelope throws when she hears her mother's friend Mrs. De Lacey isn't coming would destroy anyone's resolve. It's the fashionable thing for all young ladies to have a dragon, to be nothing more than an accessory, an inanimate object on one's shoulder. So of course Penelope's father got her the best dragon money can buy. Though poor Sir Jessamyn Carnavoran Artos has a nervous disposition and Penelope's treatment of him breaks Elinor. She snaps at her cousin and flees Hathergill Hall with Sir Jessamyn, her meager belongings, and her four shillings and sixpence she has diligently saved. Only to be promptly run over by a carriage, losing all her savings to dirty ditchwater. The carriage belongs to one Mr. Cornelius Aubrey, who is a scholar and dragon expert, so he instantly is more interested in Sir Jessamyn than Elinor, his companion is Mr. Benedict Hawkins, who hopes to be Penelope's future fiance, as his father lost all his money in the same scheme that wiped out Elinor's parents. For the first time in Elinor's life she thinks, if only she could be the type of girl to attract someone like Benedict Hawkins, or if she'd admit it to herself, Benedict Hawkins. The four travelers spend the night in a local inn. Before she falls asleep Elinor wishes she could be rich and beautiful, like Mrs. De Lacey, she could win the heart of Benedict and be able to care for Sir Jessamyn as he deserves. And that's when something magical happens. But everyone knows dragons can't do magic! Yet the next day Elinor is glamoured to look like Mrs. De Lacey and she has to put on the performance of a lifetime to save herself, her sisters, and her heart. If only fairy tales could come true.

I have always strongly identified with Elinor from Sense and Sensibility, so to have a similarly named capable young woman as the heroine of Scales and Sensibility, I couldn't be happier than Sir Jessamyn with a plate full of pheasant. Everything about this book just brought me joy. My love of dragons, happily ever afters, the Regency, house parties, revenge, true love, wait, I'm going a bit William Goldman there... This book at first sounded a little absurd, not that I don't like absurdity, but a world with dragons and no magic? I thought maybe it wouldn't work. But Stephanie Burgis does such a credible job grounding her fantastical tales. Everything makes sense with her worldbuilding. With her Harwood Spellbook "British" society being run by women was historically linked to Boudica. Here the way dragons were discovered was more along the lines of Mary Anning and her hunt for a living fossil. In the last two years I have become more than a little Mary Anning obsessed, I've even read The Essex Serpent twice as well as watching the miniseries to follow Cora Seabourne's desperate attempts to follow in Mary Anning's footsteps. Therefore a world in which a living fossil, a dragon, without magic, without anything other than just being a reptile that is named a dragon makes such sense. Of course there turns out to be more to Sir Jessamyn than meets the eye, but the point is, I loved this realistic grounding. What's more the whole financial scandal that lost Elinor and Beneidct's families their fortunes, The Great Brazilian Bubble, was common with banks and investments during the time period and had a real world counterpart, the South Sea Bubble, which, while earlier, was used to great effect in Andrea Penrose's Regency novel, Sweet Revenge and therefore makes me link the Regency more with the scandal than perhaps it ought. As fairy tales always have their grounding in reality, being written to teach a lesson that would otherwise go unheeded, so does fantasy. And really good fantasy builds it story on a bedrock of truth, and that's what this book is and does, now I need to go find me a dragon, because I now know they're out there.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Benedict Hawkins, Cornelius Aubrey, Dragons, Elinor Tregarth, Fairy Tales, Mary Anning, Mrs. De Lacey, Regency Magic, Scales and Sensibility, Sir Jessamyn, South Sea Bubble, Stephanie Burgis, The Essex Serpent

Scales and Sensibility by Stephanie Burgis
Published by: Stephanie Burgis
Publication Date: Octover 4th, 2021
Format: Kindle, 307 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

When her parents lost everything and promptly died Elinor Tregarth and her two sisters had to rely on the kindness of their relatives. But no one household could be expected to take on three penniless orphans so they were separated across the length and breath of England. Elinor ended up at Hathergill Hall to be a dogsbody to her cousin Penelope. Penelope under normal circumstances is hard to deal with, leading up to her debut she's a nightmare. She is making everyone, in particular Elinor, suffer. But Elinor never knew there'd be a breaking point but the tantrum Penelope throws when she hears her mother's friend Mrs. De Lacey isn't coming would destroy anyone's resolve. It's the fashionable thing for all young ladies to have a dragon, to be nothing more than an accessory, an inanimate object on one's shoulder. So of course Penelope's father got her the best dragon money can buy. Though poor Sir Jessamyn Carnavoran Artos has a nervous disposition and Penelope's treatment of him breaks Elinor. She snaps at her cousin and flees Hathergill Hall with Sir Jessamyn, her meager belongings, and her four shillings and sixpence she has diligently saved. Only to be promptly run over by a carriage, losing all her savings to dirty ditchwater. The carriage belongs to one Mr. Cornelius Aubrey, who is a scholar and dragon expert, so he instantly is more interested in Sir Jessamyn than Elinor, his companion is Mr. Benedict Hawkins, who hopes to be Penelope's future fiance, as his father lost all his money in the same scheme that wiped out Elinor's parents. For the first time in Elinor's life she thinks, if only she could be the type of girl to attract someone like Benedict Hawkins, or if she'd admit it to herself, Benedict Hawkins. The four travelers spend the night in a local inn. Before she falls asleep Elinor wishes she could be rich and beautiful, like Mrs. De Lacey, she could win the heart of Benedict and be able to care for Sir Jessamyn as he deserves. And that's when something magical happens. But everyone knows dragons can't do magic! Yet the next day Elinor is glamoured to look like Mrs. De Lacey and she has to put on the performance of a lifetime to save herself, her sisters, and her heart. If only fairy tales could come true.

I have always strongly identified with Elinor from Sense and Sensibility, so to have a similarly named capable young woman as the heroine of Scales and Sensibility, I couldn't be happier than Sir Jessamyn with a plate full of pheasant. Everything about this book just brought me joy. My love of dragons, happily ever afters, the Regency, house parties, revenge, true love, wait, I'm going a bit William Goldman there... This book at first sounded a little absurd, not that I don't like absurdity, but a world with dragons and no magic? I thought maybe it wouldn't work. But Stephanie Burgis does such a credible job grounding her fantastical tales. Everything makes sense with her worldbuilding. With her Harwood Spellbook "British" society being run by women was historically linked to Boudica. Here the way dragons were discovered was more along the lines of Mary Anning and her hunt for a living fossil. In the last two years I have become more than a little Mary Anning obsessed, I've even read The Essex Serpent twice as well as watching the miniseries to follow Cora Seabourne's desperate attempts to follow in Mary Anning's footsteps. Therefore a world in which a living fossil, a dragon, without magic, without anything other than just being a reptile that is named a dragon makes such sense. Of course there turns out to be more to Sir Jessamyn than meets the eye, but the point is, I loved this realistic grounding. What's more the whole financial scandal that lost Elinor and Beneidct's families their fortunes, The Great Brazilian Bubble, was common with banks and investments during the time period and had a real world counterpart, the South Sea Bubble, which, while earlier, was used to great effect in Andrea Penrose's Regency novel, Sweet Revenge and therefore makes me link the Regency more with the scandal than perhaps it ought. As fairy tales always have their grounding in reality, being written to teach a lesson that would otherwise go unheeded, so does fantasy. And really good fantasy builds it story on a bedrock of truth, and that's what this book is and does, now I need to go find me a dragon, because I now know they're out there.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Benedict Hawkins, Cornelius Aubrey, Dragons, Elinor Tregarth, Fairy Tales, Mary Anning, Mrs. De Lacey, Regency Magic, Scales and Sensibility, Sir Jessamyn, South Sea Bubble, Stephanie Burgis, The Essex Serpent

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Published by: Custom House
Publication Date: May 27th, 2016
Format: Paperback, 416 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

The death of Cora Seaborne's abusive husband means she can finally cast aside the shackles of the life she was forced into. She can indulge her desire to be the next Mary Anning. Taking her household, which consists of her companion Martha and her disturbed son Francis, to Colchester, she spends her days mucking about the countryside wearing men's boots and unflattering clothing looking for ammonites. Once she even tangled with a man trying to rescue a sheep from the muck. But soon Colchester is abuzz with rumors of the Essex Serpent. It's hunting the estuaries and killing children and pets. Cora doesn't believe in something so fanciful, but she does wonder, could a creature from long ago have survived in an out of the way place to be discovered in the present day? Might she find a living fossil? Science doesn't deny it is possible and her hero, Mary Anning, often hoped to make such a discovery. Cora longs to have her name next to such a find in a museum and therefore jumps at the opportunity that fate hands her. Through mutual friends she is introduced to the Ransomes who live in Aldwinter. As fate would have it the Reverend Will Ransome is the man she helped to rescue the sheep. Despite such an inauspicious beginning the two become fast friends. Cora is fascinated by a pew in his church which is carved to represent the serpent, while Will is incensed by his parishioners obsession with folk tales and threatens to destroy the pew. Will and Cora argue over everything, from religion to science, it is a meeting of true minds. Everyone comments on their closeness, Cora even moves to Aldwinter. Yet Will's wife Stella doesn't seem to mind, and Martha, well Martha has more important things to worry about. But then there's an incident at the school. Cora begs her friend, Doctor Luke Garrett, to come down and investigate the medical reason behind the hysteria. This causes a breach between Cora and Will. A breach that will be healed and ruptured on one fateful night. So while they might not survive, the question remains, does the serpent?

Yes, I fully admit to picking up The Essex Serpent due to Tom Hiddleston. Will Ransome is a role Hiddles was born to play in my mind. But I picked up the book a second time mainly because of that adaptation. Yes, The Essex Serpent was also picked for my book club, but I wanted to wade back into the world of Cora and Will, a world that the adaptation made seem so shallow and hostile. To have wasted such talent on taking a multidimensional book and making it so one-dimensional just infuriates me. Yes, the book is rather light on plot but The Essex Serpent is beautifully and lushly written and has so much substance. It fits more into the style of Gothic literature and romance from the 19th century than what we necessarily think of as Gothic now. The book is all about duality as epitomized by the word "cleave," to cling and to separate all at once. The serpent is both a supernatural entity and a rather large fish. Stella is both dying and luminous. The world runs on both religion and science. Cora and Will's romance is both everything and nothing. Two states of being happening simultaneously. This recurs over and over again, reality versus fallacy. And at one point, the hysteria of Aldwinter with regards to the serpent reaches such a fever pitch that the young schoolgirls act out in a way that would best be described as Salem in 1692. And the fact that the doctor swings in and brings up ergot poisoning made my dorky history heart soar! Because it could very well be hysteria OR ergot OR none of the above. The Essex Serpent is about the mysteries that science hasn't yet explained but even when they eventually are they are still magnificent. Look to the Fata Morgana that Will and Cora saw. They literally saw a ship with red sails sailing across the sky but it is just an optical illusion. Did knowing what it was make it any less amazing? No it didn't. But we go back to the duality of superstition and science, there are those that will meet wonder and invention with hostility and those who will welcome it with open arms. That is why Will is such an interesting character, while he will embrace an illusion in the sky and turn his flock from superstition he still won't embrace medical science. He is the essence of duality. A mystery that resides in us all and will keep me coming back to this book time and time again.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Aldwinter, Cora Seaborne, Fata Morgana, Going Gothic, Gothic Literature, Living Fossil, Mary Anning, Reverend Will Ransome, Sarah Perry, Science, Superstition, The Essex Serpent, Tom Hiddleston

Mad and Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency by Bea Koch
Published by: Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date: September 1st, 2020
Format: Paperback, 272 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, urged her niece, Lady Caroline Lamb, to "boldly mould, invent, design." That could be the clarion call for all the women contained in these pages. They formed their own interconnected society of scientists, artists, philanthropists, writers. They gave each other encouragement and support, because they lived in a society where they were viewed as second class citizens. Yet in their spheres they made a mark. What's odd is that all these women, from Anne Lister to Mary Anning, are viewed as exceptions to the rule. They were trailblazers for the female sex. They are the chosen ones remembered by history. To an extent. But with modern historians going back and reevaluating the Regency they are finding more and more woman who lived life on their own terms. Without going back and looking at how these women influenced their time period in their own way we aren't getting a full view of history. We are getting a prejudiced, skewed, masculine view. History is always said to be written by the winners. Well, for thousands of years that was white men. And white men didn't want to think about minorities, or in fact anyone other than themselves. Yet these people existed. There are arguments to be made that Jane Austen herself showed a very white world, but that's because she never got to finish Sanditon. Georgiana Lamb, like the real Dido Belle, was a woman of color. Who knows how she would have fared if the novel had been completed. Thankfully we have the television adaptation showing us a very fierce, independent, and headstrong young lady. And speaking of Austen, have you ever wondered about the women who controlled Almack's? The grand dames who could make or break your season with a single voucher? Well, they weren't at all the elderly dragons you thought they were, they were living breathing women, who made alliances and friendships and decisions based on these aspects of their lives. A few of them were quite notorious for other reasons too. Because what happens when you pull back the curtain is you see so much more than what you ever expected. People in the past almost become ossified by history, especially when told from a certain point of view. It's time to bring them into the light like Mary Anning's findings. It's time for the truth to be told in the hopes that more history will emerge.

To say that this book is just about the Regency is stretching things. As Bea Koch admits in her introduction the women that came before and the women that came after are just as important to an understanding of the time period, and I get that, I do. But a cynic would say, maybe it's just because there really weren't that many badass women in the Regency itself, while an optimist would say that she just wanted to find a way to include Anne Lister in her book. Because who wouldn't want Anne Lister in their book? Though the Anne Lister section is rather slight and Bea directs you more to the television show Gentleman Jack than bothers to spend too much time on Anne. And that is one of the flaws of this book, we have women of society, of royalty, of arts, oddly not of letters, of science, of lovers of women, of minorities, and of religion, and yet each section just feels a little too short, like a blurb in Who's Who. In all seriousness I almost expected to find "Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Elizabeth,daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of Gloucester, by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, November 5, 1789; Mary, born November 20, 1791." There isn't much depth here, but it's a good place to start. It's almost like CliffNotes. If you've read Austen and want a little bit more history, here's as good a place as any to get just that little bit more, especially in regard to Almack's and the female royalty of the time. Personally I found the later chapters about "The Fairer Sex" and "Historical Accuracy and Regency England" the most interesting. Mainly because I find it fascinating when people's prejudices show, in particular with the casting of Bridgerton, that they never realized that queer people and people of color actually existed back then. Just because the world you've allowed yourself to be exposed to is so narrow that doesn't mean otherness doesn't exist. As for those women I found most mad and bad? The sculptor Anne Damer is top of the list, the exquiste way she trolled her detractors with The Three Witches of Macbeth painting is chef's kiss perfection, I also really loved seeing Mary Seacole in these pages and not just on the recent season of Doctor Who. Though I do wonder why Bea Koch didn't mention the Princess Caraboo film...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anne Damer, Anne Lister, Bea Koch, Dido Belle, Doctor Who, Gentleman Jack, Georgiana Lamb, History, Jane Austen, Mad and Bad, Mary Anning, Persuasion, Prejudice, Princess Caraboo, Racism, Regency Romp, Sanditon

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Published by: Custom House
Publication Date: May 27th, 2016
Format: Kindle, 433 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

The death of Cora Seaborne's abusive husband means she can finally cast aside the shackles of the life she was forced into. She can indulge her desire to be the next Mary Anning. Taking her household, which consists of her companion Martha and her disturbed son Francis, to Colchester, she spends her days mucking about the countryside wearing men's boots and unflattering clothing looking for ammonites. Once she even tangled with a man trying to rescue a sheep from the muck. But soon Colchester is abuzz with rumors of the Essex Serpent. It's hunting the estuaries and killing children and pets. Cora doesn't believe in something so fanciful, but she does wonder, could a creature from long ago have survived in an out of the way place to be discovered in the present day? Science doesn't deny it is possible and her hero, Mary Anning, often hoped to make such a discovery. Cora longs to have her name next to such a find in a museum and therefore jumps at the opportunity that fate hands her. Through mutual friends she is introduced to the Ransomes who live in Aldwinter. As fate would have it the Reverend Will Ransome is the man she helped to rescue the sheep. Despite such an inauspicious beginning the two become fast friends. Cora is fascinated by a pew in his church which is carved to represent the serpent, while Will is incensed by his parishioners obsession with fairy tales and threatens to destroy the pew. They argue over everything, from religion to science, it is a meeting of true minds. Everyone comments on their closeness, Cora even moves to Aldwinter. Yet Will's wife Stella doesn't seem to mind, and Martha, well Martha has more important things to worry about. But then there's an incident at the school. Cora begs her friend, Doctor Luke Garrett, to come down and investigate the medical reason behind the hysteria. This causes a breach between Cora and Will. A breach that will be healed and ruptured on one fateful night. So while they might not survive, the question remains, does the serpent?

The Essex Serpent is one of those books that seems to polarize people, and it has since it's publication. You either love it or you hate it and I decided to take the wisest approach and just avoid it. But then I bought Sarah Perry's Melmoth and a lot of reviews started referring to it as a companion piece to The Essex Serpent, which I took to mean I should read The Essex Serpent... Which went from being a "never " to a "some day" to a "now" event rather quickly because of the Tom Hiddleston starring adaptation that is filming. Will Ransome is a role Hiddles is born to play in my mind. But that adaptation is the future, and this is now, and this is about the book. The Essex Serpent is beautifully and lushly written yet is rather light on plot. It fits more into the style of Gothic literature and romance from the 19th century than what we necessarily think of as Gothic now. The book is all about duality as epitomized by the word "cleave," to cling and to separate all at once. The serpent is both a supernatural entity and a rather large fish. Stella is both dying and luminous. The world runs on both religion and science. Cora and Will's romance is both everything and nothing. Two states of being happening simultaneously. This recurs over and over again, reality versus fallacy. And at one point, the hysteria of Aldwinter with regards to the serpent reaches such a fever pitch that the young schoolgirls act out in a way that would best be described as Salem in 1692. And the fact that the doctor swings in and brings up ergot poisoning made my dorky history heart soar! Because it could very well be hysteria OR ergot OR none of the above. The problem is that the book reaches this fever pitch just before the summer solstice and then it just peters out. Cora had been the driving force of the book and she sees what she has done and retreats. She's barely in the rest of the book and her larger-than-life personality which carried everyone means that the other characters had to try to carry themselves, and they failed. So while the book technically ended, I like to think that in some other way it didn't and that one day the characters will find their proper endings.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Ammonite, Cleave, Cora Seaborne, Dinosaurs, Duality, Gothic, Hiddles, Mary Anning, Melmoth, Myths, Naturalist, Reverend Will Ransome, Salem, Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent, Tom Hiddleston

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Published by: Custom House
Publication Date: May 27th, 2016
Format: Kindle, 433 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

The death of Cora Seaborne's abusive husband means she can finally cast aside the shackles of the life she was forced into. She can indulge her desire to be the next Mary Anning. Taking her household, which consists of her companion Martha and her disturbed son Francis, to Colchester, she spends her days mucking about the countryside wearing men's boots and unflattering clothing looking for ammonites. Once she even tangled with a man trying to rescue a sheep from the muck. But soon Colchester is abuzz with rumors of the Essex Serpent. It's hunting the estuaries and killing children and pets. Cora doesn't believe in something so fanciful, but she does wonder, could a creature from long ago have survived in an out of the way place to be discovered in the present day? Science doesn't deny it is possible and her hero, Mary Anning, often hoped to make such a discovery. Cora longs to have her name next to such a find in a museum and therefore jumps at the opportunity that fate hands her. Through mutual friends she is introduced to the Ransomes who live in Aldwinter. As fate would have it the Reverend Will Ransome is the man she helped to rescue the sheep. Despite such an inauspicious beginning the two become fast friends. Cora is fascinated by a pew in his church which is carved to represent the serpent, while Will is incensed by his parishioners obsession with fairy tales and threatens to destroy the pew. They argue over everything, from religion to science, it is a meeting of true minds. Everyone comments on their closeness, Cora even moves to Aldwinter. Yet Will's wife Stella doesn't seem to mind, and Martha, well Martha has more important things to worry about. But then there's an incident at the school. Cora begs her friend, Doctor Luke Garrett, to come down and investigate the medical reason behind the hysteria. This causes a breach between Cora and Will. A breach that will be healed and ruptured on one fateful night. So while they might not survive, the question remains, does the serpent?

The Essex Serpent is one of those books that seems to polarize people, and it has since it's publication. You either love it or you hate it and I decided to take the wisest approach and just avoid it. But then I bought Sarah Perry's Melmoth and a lot of reviews started referring to it as a companion piece to The Essex Serpent, which I took to mean I should read The Essex Serpent... Which went from being a "never " to a "some day" to a "now" event rather quickly because of the Tom Hiddleston starring adaptation that is filming. Will Ransome is a role Hiddles is born to play in my mind. But that adaptation is the future, and this is now, and this is about the book. The Essex Serpent is beautifully and lushly written yet is rather light on plot. It fits more into the style of Gothic literature and romance from the 19th century than what we necessarily think of as Gothic now. The book is all about duality as epitomized by the word "cleave," to cling and to separate all at once. The serpent is both a supernatural entity and a rather large fish. Stella is both dying and luminous. The world runs on both religion and science. Cora and Will's romance is both everything and nothing. Two states of being happening simultaneously. This recurs over and over again, reality versus fallacy. And at one point, the hysteria of Aldwinter with regards to the serpent reaches such a fever pitch that the young schoolgirls act out in a way that would best be described as Salem in 1692. And the fact that the doctor swings in and brings up ergot poisoning made my dorky history heart soar! Because it could very well be hysteria OR ergot OR none of the above. The problem is that the book reaches this fever pitch just before the summer solstice and then it just peters out. Cora had been the driving force of the book and she sees what she has done and retreats. She's barely in the rest of the book and her larger-than-life personality which carried everyone means that the other characters had to try to carry themselves, and they failed. So while the book technically ended, I like to think that in some other way it didn't and that one day the characters will find their proper endings.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Ammonite, Cleave, Cora Seaborne, Dinosaurs, Duality, Going Gothic, Gothic, Hiddles, Mary Anning, Melmoth, Myths, Naturalist, Reverend Will Ransome, Salem, Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent, Tom Hiddleston