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

Last year when it was announced that an adaptation of The Essex Serpent was underway staring Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes the book which had been languishing on my to be read pile for more years than I can count, probably since it was released, went straight to the top of the pile. I devoured the book and it was one of my favorite reads of last year. So really, I was shooting myself in the foot wasn't I? Because rarely does an adaptation create the same love in me as the book. There are of course exceptions, but The Princess Bride and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell kind of prove my point more than disprove it. So the number one show I was most looking forward to really had no chance. Yet it does work, but only on the surface. The thing that is so amazing about the book is that it tackles so many subjects so sensitively. Women's rights, abuse, the treatment of the poor, religion, superstition, science, attraction, repulsion, mass delusions, and most importantly, people who are "other" from disabled to dwarfism. While they touch on aspects of poverty they really narrowed in on the the superstition/ religion/ science because they obviously decided that this was going to be about channeling the Salem Witch Trials and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, I'm just saying it's very narrow minded to make Cora the "other" when the book had so many big ideas. I mean, for Pete's sake Cora is dressed in red like a nice delicious apple when Will succumbs to her temptation. Could we make her any more of a scarlet woman? And don't get me started on those Amish beards. I concede that changes had to be made, so much of the story is told in an epistolary manner that that wouldn't have worked. But I should have known that something was wrong with this adaptation when they didn't hire someone with dwarfism to play Luke. I mean, that's a pretty big change to make, and not for the better. Yes, Frank Dillane does a magnificent job capturing Luke's personality, but his personality was formed by his dwarfism, so what the fuck? Why change that? But more importantly there were certain beats they HAD to hit to make it actually feel like the book and they just didn't. Hiddles doesn't destroy the pew, Luke doesn't try to kill himself, and as for that happy ending? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?! I could have accepted this as a shallow adaptation of a deep book because it does exude the Gothic and hot priest Hiddles, but the happy ending with Cora and Will coming together? NO! Bad adaptation. The whole point was lost on everyone involved in this production. Now IF they reedited the final episode and when Will puts Cora's letter in a drawer and closes it and it went straight to the credits...I think I could accept that.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Claire Danes, Dwarfism, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Religion, Salem Witch Trials, Science, The Essex Serpent, The Princess Bride, 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, 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