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READ The Essex Serpent DOWNLOAD Î RISHTALIKHENGEHUMNAYA.CO » Sarah Perry Sarah Perry » 1 SUMMARY Ensinniga och frihetstörstande CoraHon bestämmer sig för att lämna storstaden för landsbygden i Essex tillsammans med sin socialistiskt orienterade väninna Martha och sin mycket speciella son Francis De hamnar i den lilla staden Colchester där rykten om ett mystiskt odjur har skapat masshysteri hos lo. We are cleaved together we are cleaved apart everything that draws me to you is everything that drives me away How I loved holding this book in my hands with the gorgeous William Morris cover and the soft uneven deckle edged pages While perusing this lovely volume I revelled in the gothic atmosphere I looked forward to the intimate letters and notes sprinkled throughout the narrative I was intrigued by the mystery of the serpent the palpable fear of those in the damp mossy seaside village of Aldwinter Not to mention the writing oh the writingAnd I loved the characters All of them from the hunched brilliant surgeon Luke Garrett to the enlightened and captivating star fairy Stella Ransome I even felt for the plight of the miserable knife wielding attacker Samuel Hall The humanity of each character shone throughI didn t want to put the book down but now that I have finished it so uickly I am a little remorseful it is over and I am yanked out of this alluring world This world in which the natural and spiritual battle against each other uselessly Where love whether unreuited divisive undefined or wrong remains nonetheless a jewel that cannot be ignored or apologised for In this world women are beautiful and wise or they cast away their beauty and refused to be defined that way or they have important things to do in their lives than chase beauty and its rewards In this world there is a Victorian consumptive a legend of Loch Ness proportions that sends children into terrifying hysterics and a dark and impoverished London in the backdrop But am I really that far from the world Sarah Perry created It s true that people in this story gaze at sea treasures and wildflowers instead of their smartphones Other than that she created a truly accessible tale with themes and situations that are modern than one might have imagined in this gothic Victorian book that boasts the spectres of Stoker Shelley Collins and DickensFear is the serpent that slithers throughout this book s pages Fear of a monster yes But also all the secret fears that lie in our hearts The serpent mirrors our innate terror of death of what slinks damply hidden in the fog It mimics a phallic shape in matters of passion and its frightening conseuences It s the awful suspicion that one is alone and unseen leaving no prints and with nothing tethering one to the surface of the earth It is fear of our spiritual path or lack of oneThis book does not provide answers just a platform for the human heart cleaved and oh it is such a beautiful thing to behold Buried Mountain Secrets jewel that cannot be ignored or apologised for In this world women are beautiful and wise or they cast away their beauty and refused to be defined that way or they have important things to do in their lives than chase beauty and its rewards In this world there is a Victorian consumptive a legend of Loch Ness proportions that sends children into terrifying hysterics and a dark and impoverished London in the backdrop But am I really that far from the world Sarah Perry created It s true that people in this story gaze at sea treasures and wildflowers instead of their smartphones Other than that she created a truly accessible tale with themes and situations that are modern than one might have imagined in this gothic Victorian book that boasts the spectres of Stoker Shelley Collins and DickensFear is the serpent that slithers throughout this book s pages Fear of a monster yes But also all the secret fears that lie in our hearts The serpent mirrors our innate terror of death of what slinks damply hidden in the fog It mimics a phallic shape in matters of passion and its frightening conseuences It s the awful suspicion that one is alone and unseen leaving no prints and with nothing tethering one to the surface of the earth It is fear of our spiritual path or lack of oneThis book does not provide answers The Deranged Cousins or Whatever just a platform for the human heart cleaved and oh it is such a beautiful thing to behold

READ The Essex Serpent DOWNLOAD Î RISHTALIKHENGEHUMNAYA.CO » Sarah Perry Sarah Perry » 1 SUMMARY KalbefolkningenCoras teori är att det rör sig om en oupptäckt art som hon är fast besluten att hitta och klassificera Hon finner en oväntad vän och intellektuell jämlike i traktens präst William Ransome Tillsammans söker de svaret på gåtan samtidigt som Will och Cora oundvikligen dras till varandr. The pendulum swings from one year to the next and there s darkness on the face of the deepThe year is 1893 and something evil is lurking in the Blackwater Estuary in Essex England Nearly two hundred years prior a hideous winged serpent was said to rise from the waters and walk the woods and the commons terrorizing the villagers As uickly as it had appeared it once again disappeared and was no longer to be seen until now The inhabitants of Aldwinter and the surrounding villages are once again caught up in a hysteria that seizes them by day and haunts them by night If you think this brief description marks this as a gripping horror novel perfect for the month of October I d have to say it depends The terror lies in the anticipation much as it does for the main characters as well as the masses of the townspeople The point is not what I see but what I feel I cannot see the ether yet I feel it enter and depart and depend upon it I feel that something is coming sooner or later my words be marked I was not frightened by The Essex Serpent but I was thoroughly absorbed by it This is a story about the thought provoking ideas the masterful characterizations and the striking settings The ideas may not be new but they are woven so intelligently throughout the plot that I couldn t help but reflect on them from a different angle perhaps Faith and superstition versus science and reason these themes could never be exhausted entirely and the interest lies in refreshingly original ways of presenting them to an audience I felt that Sarah Perry did just that She offers a well balanced view of both sides of the euation and it is up to us as discerning readers to come to a conclusion if any Cora Seaborne recently widowed from a troubled marriage is a naturalist She worships the famed fossil hunter and paleontologist Mary Anning of Lyme Regis Now free of the bonds of wedlock Cora strikes out with son Francis likely autistic and companion Martha a socialist to Essex in order to dig in the dirt and perhaps unravel this mystery of the serpent Cora is a heroine that I could wholly admire Sometimes I think I sold my soul so that I could live as I must Oh I don t mean without morals or conscience I only mean with freedom to think the thoughts that come to send them where I want them to go not to let them run along tracks someone else set leading only this way or that When she comes up against the likes of Will Ransome an improbable friendship as well as an intellectually rewarding rivalry ensues Will is the resident vicar of Aldwinter who of late has had to deal with the challenges of a parish that has opened itself up to the perils of superstition There was a feeling mostly unspoken at least in his presence that they were all under judgment doubtless well deserved from which only he could deliver them but what comfort could he offer which would not also affirm their sudden fear There seems to be a spark between these two but Will is happily married to Stella described as a fairylike little woman of ethereal ualities with a grim diagnosis of tuberculosis Cora is too recently liberated from the authority of a man and besides has the devotion of another man Dr Luke Garrett There could not be anything between these two other than friendship right So they deny to themselves and one another any sort of attraction We both speak of illuminating the world but we have different sources of light you and IWhat shined most in this novel in my opinion were the vivid characters and the stimulating dialogue There are a number of players to keep track of here but each is so well fleshed out that it never became at all confusing A list of names is not provided nor is it needed The conversations between Cora and Will are riveting and so smart I don t have time to mention everyone here but it would be an extreme oversight on my part if I did not acknowledge Dr Luke Garrett as well as his wealthy friend George Spencer Dr Garrett is a bit of a revolutionary so to speak in the medical world He is forward thinking but nearing the end of the Victorian era the public were still resistant to many of the new practices For that matter the medical community itself was not entirely accepting of his innovative ideas I regarded Luke Garrett uite highly and he very well may have been my favorite character The relationship between Luke and George is another facet of friendship that the author very sympathetically illustrates for us In fact one could say that besides the thesis of faith versus science friendship and love are further themes illuminated uite brilliantly within this novel I recommend The Essex Serpent to fans of historical fiction or anyone interested in the debate between faith and science Sarah Perry s writing is rather addictive and I am uite keen to check out Melmoth due for release shortly For further reading on the topic I also recommend Tracy Chevalier s Remarkable Creatures which I found to be a truly excellent piece of historical fiction I ve always said there are no mysteries only things we don t yet know but lately I ve thought not even knowledge takes all strangeness from the world Buried Mountain Secrets jämlike i traktens präst William Ransome Tillsammans söker de svaret på gåtan samtidigt som Will och Cora oundvikligen dras till varandr. The pendulum swings from one year to the next and there s darkness on the face of the deepThe year is 1893 and something evil is lurking in the Blackwater Estuary in Essex England Nearly two hundred years prior a hideous winged serpent was said to rise from the waters and walk the woods and the commons terrorizing the villagers As uickly as it had appeared it once again disappeared and was no longer to be seen until now The inhabitants of Aldwinter and the surrounding villages are once again caught up in a hysteria that seizes them by day and haunts them by night If you think this brief description marks this as a gripping horror novel perfect for the month of October I d have to say it depends The terror lies in the anticipation much as it does for the main characters as well as the masses of the townspeople The point is not what I see but what I feel I cannot see the ether yet I feel it enter and depart and depend upon it I feel that something is coming sooner or later my words be marked I was not frightened by The Essex Serpent but I was thoroughly absorbed by it This is a story about the thought provoking ideas the masterful characterizations and the striking settings The ideas may not be new but they are woven so intelligently throughout the plot that I couldn t help but reflect on them from a different angle perhaps Faith and superstition versus science and reason these themes could never be exhausted entirely and the interest lies in refreshingly original ways of presenting them to an audience I felt that Sarah Perry did Buried Mountain Secrets just that She offers a well balanced view of both sides of the euation and it is up to us as discerning readers to come to a conclusion if any Cora Seaborne recently widowed from a troubled marriage is a naturalist She worships the famed fossil hunter and paleontologist Mary Anning of Lyme Regis Now free of the bonds of wedlock Cora strikes out with son Francis likely autistic and companion Martha a socialist to Essex in order to dig in the dirt and perhaps unravel this mystery of the serpent Cora is a heroine that I could wholly admire Sometimes I think I sold my soul so that I could live as I must Oh I don t mean without morals or conscience I only mean with freedom to think the thoughts that come to send them where I want them to go not to let them run along tracks someone else set leading only this way or that When she comes up against the likes of Will Ransome an improbable friendship as well as an intellectually rewarding rivalry ensues Will is the resident vicar of Aldwinter who of late has had to deal with the challenges of a parish that has opened itself up to the perils of superstition There was a feeling mostly unspoken at least in his presence that they were all under Buried Mountain Secrets judgment doubtless well deserved from which only he could deliver them but what comfort could he offer which would not also affirm their sudden fear There seems to be a spark between these two but Will is happily married to Stella described as a fairylike little woman of ethereal ualities with a grim diagnosis of tuberculosis Cora is too recently liberated from the authority of a man and besides has the devotion of another man Dr Luke Garrett There could not be anything between these two other than friendship right So they deny to themselves and one another any sort of attraction We both speak of illuminating the world but we have different sources of light you and IWhat shined most in this novel in my opinion were the vivid characters and the stimulating dialogue There are a number of players to keep track of here but each is so well fleshed out that it never became at all confusing A list of names is not provided nor is it needed The conversations between Cora and Will are riveting and so smart I don t have time to mention everyone here but it would be an extreme oversight on my part if I did not acknowledge Dr Luke Garrett as well as his wealthy friend George Spencer Dr Garrett is a bit of a revolutionary so to speak in the medical world He is forward thinking but nearing the end of the Victorian era the public were still resistant to many of the new practices For that matter the medical community itself was not entirely accepting of his innovative ideas I regarded Luke Garrett uite highly and he very well may have been my favorite character The relationship between Luke and George is another facet of friendship that the author very sympathetically illustrates for us In fact one could say that besides the thesis of faith versus science friendship and love are further themes illuminated uite brilliantly within this novel I recommend The Essex Serpent to fans of historical fiction or anyone interested in the debate between faith and science Sarah Perry s writing is rather addictive and I am uite keen to check out Melmoth due for release shortly For further reading on the topic I also recommend Tracy Chevalier s Remarkable Creatures which I found to be a truly excellent piece of historical fiction I ve always said there are no mysteries only things we don t yet know but lately I ve thought not even knowledge takes all strangeness from the world

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READ The Essex Serpent DOWNLOAD Î RISHTALIKHENGEHUMNAYA.CO » Sarah Perry Sarah Perry » 1 SUMMARY London 1893 Cora Seaborne är fortfarande ung men har just blivit änka och nu förväntar sig omgivningen att hon ska snöra åt korsetten klä sig i svart och dra sig tillbaka med en knähund i famnen Men äktenskapet var inte särskilt lyckligt och rollen som viktoriansk societetsfru passade aldrig den eg. Sometimes I think I sold my soul so that I could live as I must Oh I don t mean without morals or conscience I only mean with freedom to think the thoughts that come to send them where I want them to go not to let them run along tracks someone else set leading only this way or that Frowning she ran her thumb along the serpent s spine and said I ve never said this before not to anyone though I ve meant to but yes I ve sold my soul though I m afraid it didn t fetch too high a price I had a faith the sort I think you might be born with but I ve seen what it does and I traded it in It s a sort of blindness or a choice to be mad to turn your back on everything new and wonderful not to see that there s no fewer miracles in the microscope than in the gospels You think you really think that it is one or the other your faith or your reason The Essex Serpent is a magnificent work that uses the form of the Gothic novel to explore real world and very human concerns It may be set in the late 19th century but it resonates with issues just as compelling as those of the 21st Superstition and faith versus science and fact The nature and limits of friendship the moral limits of medicine Sarah Perry has said What most interests me about the past is not its otherness but its sameness One manifestation is a concern with the housing horrors of the poor in 19th century London being sueezed by landlords and their residences being replaced by posh lodgings I wanted to portray a late nineteenth century which was in many respects modern rather than a sort of Victoriana theme park of pea soupers and smelling salts By the 1890s you could travel by Tube and walk along an Embankment lit by electric lights you could have a tooth pulled under anaesthesia join a union read the Times buy frozen lamb shipped over from New Zealand and so on I suppose the obverse of saying they were rather like us is to say and we are rather like them and I do fear that we are regressing to a decidedly Victorian state when it comes to housing and a tendency to think of those who live in poverty as in some way deserving it due to a lack of virtue rather than mere ill fortune Cora Seaborne lately and happily relieved of her unloving but controlling husband by virtue of a fatal illness is no one s idea of a damsel in distress uite the opposite She has a passion for learning and exploration 1893 in the final decade of Victoria s reign was an exciting time The World Columbian Exhibition opened in Chicago Wall Street suffered another stock crash Women voted for the first time in a national election in New Zealand Cora is eager to be a part of this new age of scientific growth Shedding her London home At Euston Suare and Paddington the Underground stations received their passengers who poured in like so much raw material going down to be milled and processed and turned out of molds and indulging her growing interest in paleobiology Cora along with her on the spectrum son Francis and his nanny Cora s friend Martha heads to Colchester in Essex They re finding fossils on the coastCora will be happy as a schoolboy there up to her knees in mud Strange News out of Essex a woodwork from the 1669 pamphlet It is while on a random explore in the rain and considering her oneness with nature It struck her that everything under that white sky was made of the same substance not uite animal but not merely earth where branches had sheared from their trunks they left bright wounds and she would not have been surprised to see severed stumps of oak and elm pulse as she passed Laughing she imagined herself a part of it and leaning against a trunk in earshot of a chattering thrush held up her arm and wondered if she might see vivid green lichen stippling the skin between her fingers that she first meets Pastor Will Ransome It definitely counts as meet cute when they neither knowing who the other is team up to retrieve an animal that had gotten stuck in the considerable mudThe pastor and the naturalist will form a beautiful bond as they engage in a dialectic of faith reason and respectful consideration and sometimes hostile confrontation The core of faith in tension with science is central Rumors of a serpent have been making rounds a return of a creature last reported in the 17th century Many of the locals indulge in superstition as fear spreads Will is determined to put an end to such notions but the naturalist Cora is hoping it might be a remnant of what had been thought a lost species a plesiosaur perhaps bringing to her scientific approach a considerable store of faith in the possible Perry plays these tensions like Itzhak Perlman on a Stradivarius Sarah Perry from The GuardianThe tension between faith and science is far from the only buzzing string here The connection Cora and Will make leads to battles of both the expected and surprising sorts and while the core of their words is beyond reproach their growing affection for each other excitement at intellectual challenge but also excitement at the very presence of the other makes for than a bit of discomfort While Cora is happily widowed Pastor Will remains smitten with his beautiful both in body and spirit wife Stella a star who would sparkle in any firmament Of course lustrous though she may be Stella is not exactly in the best of health Can Cora and Will s friendship sustain or will it transform into something else William Ransome and Cora Seaborne stripped of code and convention even of speech stood with her strong hand in his children of the earth and lost in wonder As for that beastie the notion for the story was a happy accident It was Sarah Perry s husband who told her on a car journey through Essex having spotted a sign to the village of Henham about the legend of a serpent Perry felt her scalp tighten the better to grasp the idea and keep it safe inside her head a feeling she has become used to when she thinks of something she knows will make a great book Immediately I thought if that beast came back in the Victorian era post Darwin when there was a trend for natural history and people were fossil collecting people would have a very different response from those in the 17th century who had seen this beast from The Guardian interview The structure of the core conflict came to Perry in a flash between myth and superstition and faith and reason and science and all of those clashing over this one potential beast But how best to orchestrate itThe Gothic form offered a welcome approach There are familiar elements sometimes reimagined The typical spooky castle finds an outlet in a natural setting a spot where civilization tapers off and the natural or supernatural picks up a marshland abutting the Blackwater River near an estuary the fittingly named World s End Darkness abounds there as do barely visible things and events that offer rich fodder for active imaginations In the darkness he grows afraid There s something there he feels it biding its time implacable monstrous born in water always with an eye cocked in his direction An atmosphere of mystery pervades Just what the hell is going on An ancient and obscure prophecy portends unpleasantness ahead Well folks thereabouts are persuaded that the promise of the serpent s return was being fulfilled Omens portents visions So many Supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events Yep and some pretty outstanding natural ones as well High even overwrought emotion Fuh shoo uh Science minded free at last widow meets studly passionate intellectually curious cleric And plenty of raised voices beside But the high emotional level also extends to being dazzled by beauty Women in distress Well not the usual sort Stella is particularly unwell but seems less stressed than enthralled by it Cora is a modern woman so no poor weak thing act being performed There is plenty of the vocabulary of the gothic For example chapter one begins One o clock on a dreary dayThere is also the romantic element in the gothic approach The Will Cora connection has already been mentioned There are a few other connections of this sort that are addressed But the overwhelming connection throughout the book is of friendship even if the lines between where friendship leaves off and another kind of relationship picks up can be a bit murky and even if love is the beating heart of all sorts of friendships What I absolutely didn t want to do was to write a book about two people who madly fancy each other and at the end of the book they fall in love and they get married That s so tiresome and life is so much rich and complex and complicated than that I wanted to write about a relationship that is intimate and tender and exciting and even erotic but not a conventional boy meets girl and they re soulmates and they live happy ever after storyPerry aimed to write about as many different kinds of friendship love as I could find Ones which blur the boundaries between romantic love and friendship seeing sexual desire as something cathartic and benevolent even when it s not connected to any kind of romantic attachment I still maintain that Cora and Will are basically friends but that their friendship is capacious and different and subject to change as human relationships are from the Waterstones interview There are external elements throughout the book that buttress both nature and the sublime Perry has the eye of a naturalist She makes considerable and stunning use of this talent to breathe life into her landscapes When the rain set in she delved deeper between the trees turning her face to the featureless sky It was a uniform grey without shifting of clouds or sudden blue breaks and no sign at all of the sun it was an unwritten sheet of paper and against it the bare branches were black It ought to have been dreary but Cora saw only beauty birches unfurled their strips of bark like lengths of white cloths and under her feet wet leaves were slick Everywhere bright moss had taken hold in dense wads of green fur swaddling the trees at their foot and fine pelts on broken branches that lay across the path There are plenty bits of this here Stella adds a particularly ethereal appreciation for the color blue both in its natural state and as manufactured Blue in fact tints the novel for a considerable swath in a way that is both beautiful and alarming Cora s son Francis has an interest in the natural world as well and offers some insights although he lacks the experience to be able to interpret what he observes There is a rich supply of secondary characters some of whom receive starring role treatment They serve to illuminate issues of the day One is a doctor on the cutting edge of his profession another a memorable local who will mar your dreams with visions of unspeakable fence decorations and resident earwigs Martha s social activism highlights the housing issues in London but also a sexual freedom that addresses the constraints of Victorian s Perry is not a satirist but she does offer a particularly delicious line from one of her supporting cast someone who dismisses notions of a returned monster I m uite religious you know no patience for the supernaturalAs for gripes blissfully few The vanishing of one young lass lacked a persuasive rationale I thought There was one scene late in the book that I found a bit off putting but it would be too spoilerish to note it here Neither of these imperiled for me the overall joy I experienced reading this book For me the notion of the bliss of the beautiful that permeates TES can be summed up in a line from Cora It was just the light she said up to its old tricks But how was my heart to know A wondrous read satisfying to both heart and mind The Essex Serpent is a spectacular achievement a masterpiece by a gifted writer at the peak of her powerReview posted 32417Publication May 27 2016 the original hardcover in the UK June 6 2017 by Custom House in the USA April 24 2018 trade paperNovember 15 2017 The Essex Serpent is named one of the top fifty notable works of fiction of the year by The Washington PostNovember 22 2017 The Essex Serpent is named one of its 100 Notable Books of the year by The New York TimesEXTRA STUFFLinks to the author s personal and Twitter pages You should know that as of the date of this post her personal site was still under constructionInterviews The Guardian The Essex Serpent author Sarah Perry Kids at school found me strange I didn t mind interview by Emine Saner FiveBookscom Sarah Perry recommends the best Gothic Fiction Interview by Beatrice Wilford December 1 2016 Waterstones The Book Perry Was Meant to Write by Sally Campbell December 10 2016 The Essex Serpent British Library On the trail of the Essex Serpent Perry describes her encounter with the original 1669 pamphlet that inspired the novelThe Gothic Novel A fabulous lesson This is where I got the list of Gothic novel characteristics I used for that part of the review Elements of the Gothic Novel A wonderful video from Studycom Gothic Novels Characteristics Examples it is limited though One must be a subscriber to see it all Still worth a lookFWIW In classical mythology Cora or Kore was another name of Persephone goddess of fertility and the underworld from nameberrycom Goodnight Moon just blivit änka och nu förväntar sig omgivningen att hon ska snöra åt korsetten klä sig i svart och dra sig tillbaka med en knähund i famnen Men äktenskapet var inte särskilt lyckligt och rollen som viktoriansk societetsfru passade aldrig den eg. Sometimes I think I sold my soul so that I could live as I must Oh I don t mean without morals or conscience I only mean with freedom to think the thoughts that come to send them where I want them to go not to let them run along tracks someone else set leading only this way or that Frowning she ran her thumb along the serpent s spine and said I ve never said this before not to anyone though I ve meant to but yes I ve sold my soul though I m afraid it didn t fetch too high a price I had a faith the sort I think you might be born with but I ve seen what it does and I traded it in It s a sort of blindness or a choice to be mad to turn your back on everything new and wonderful not to see that there s no fewer miracles in the microscope than in the gospels You think you really think that it is one or the other your faith or your reason The Essex Serpent is a magnificent work that uses the form of the Gothic novel to explore real world and very human concerns It may be set in the late 19th century but it resonates with issues A Hundred Summers just as compelling as those of the 21st Superstition and faith versus science and fact The nature and limits of friendship the moral limits of medicine Sarah Perry has said What most interests me about the past is not its otherness but its sameness One manifestation is a concern with the housing horrors of the poor in 19th century London being sueezed by landlords and their residences being replaced by posh lodgings I wanted to portray a late nineteenth century which was in many respects modern rather than a sort of Victoriana theme park of pea soupers and smelling salts By the 1890s you could travel by Tube and walk along an Embankment lit by electric lights you could have a tooth pulled under anaesthesia Cross Laminated Timber Design join a union read the Times buy frozen lamb shipped over from New Zealand and so on I suppose the obverse of saying they were rather like us is to say and we are rather like them and I do fear that we are regressing to a decidedly Victorian state when it comes to housing and a tendency to think of those who live in poverty as in some way deserving it due to a lack of virtue rather than mere ill fortune Cora Seaborne lately and happily relieved of her unloving but controlling husband by virtue of a fatal illness is no one s idea of a damsel in distress uite the opposite She has a passion for learning and exploration 1893 in the final decade of Victoria s reign was an exciting time The World Columbian Exhibition opened in Chicago Wall Street suffered another stock crash Women voted for the first time in a national election in New Zealand Cora is eager to be a part of this new age of scientific growth Shedding her London home At Euston Suare and Paddington the Underground stations received their passengers who poured in like so much raw material going down to be milled and processed and turned out of molds and indulging her growing interest in paleobiology Cora along with her on the spectrum son Francis and his nanny Cora s friend Martha heads to Colchester in Essex They re finding fossils on the coastCora will be happy as a schoolboy there up to her knees in mud Strange News out of Essex a woodwork from the 1669 pamphlet It is while on a random explore in the rain and considering her oneness with nature It struck her that everything under that white sky was made of the same substance not uite animal but not merely earth where branches had sheared from their trunks they left bright wounds and she would not have been surprised to see severed stumps of oak and elm pulse as she passed Laughing she imagined herself a part of it and leaning against a trunk in earshot of a chattering thrush held up her arm and wondered if she might see vivid green lichen stippling the skin between her fingers that she first meets Pastor Will Ransome It definitely counts as meet cute when they neither knowing who the other is team up to retrieve an animal that had gotten stuck in the considerable mudThe pastor and the naturalist will form a beautiful bond as they engage in a dialectic of faith reason and respectful consideration and sometimes hostile confrontation The core of faith in tension with science is central Rumors of a serpent have been making rounds a return of a creature last reported in the 17th century Many of the locals indulge in superstition as fear spreads Will is determined to put an end to such notions but the naturalist Cora is hoping it might be a remnant of what had been thought a lost species a plesiosaur perhaps bringing to her scientific approach a considerable store of faith in the possible Perry plays these tensions like Itzhak Perlman on a Stradivarius Sarah Perry from The GuardianThe tension between faith and science is far from the only buzzing string here The connection Cora and Will make leads to battles of both the expected and surprising sorts and while the core of their words is beyond reproach their growing affection for each other excitement at intellectual challenge but also excitement at the very presence of the other makes for than a bit of discomfort While Cora is happily widowed Pastor Will remains smitten with his beautiful both in body and spirit wife Stella a star who would sparkle in any firmament Of course lustrous though she may be Stella is not exactly in the best of health Can Cora and Will s friendship sustain or will it transform into something else William Ransome and Cora Seaborne stripped of code and convention even of speech stood with her strong hand in his children of the earth and lost in wonder As for that beastie the notion for the story was a happy accident It was Sarah Perry s husband who told her on a car Her Guilty Secret journey through Essex having spotted a sign to the village of Henham about the legend of a serpent Perry felt her scalp tighten the better to grasp the idea and keep it safe inside her head a feeling she has become used to when she thinks of something she knows will make a great book Immediately I thought if that beast came back in the Victorian era post Darwin when there was a trend for natural history and people were fossil collecting people would have a very different response from those in the 17th century who had seen this beast from The Guardian interview The structure of the core conflict came to Perry in a flash between myth and superstition and faith and reason and science and all of those clashing over this one potential beast But how best to orchestrate itThe Gothic form offered a welcome approach There are familiar elements sometimes reimagined The typical spooky castle finds an outlet in a natural setting a spot where civilization tapers off and the natural or supernatural picks up a marshland abutting the Blackwater River near an estuary the fittingly named World s End Darkness abounds there as do barely visible things and events that offer rich fodder for active imaginations In the darkness he grows afraid There s something there he feels it biding its time implacable monstrous born in water always with an eye cocked in his direction An atmosphere of mystery pervades Just what the hell is going on An ancient and obscure prophecy portends unpleasantness ahead Well folks thereabouts are persuaded that the promise of the serpent s return was being fulfilled Omens portents visions So many Supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events Yep and some pretty outstanding natural ones as well High even overwrought emotion Fuh shoo uh Science minded free at last widow meets studly passionate intellectually curious cleric And plenty of raised voices beside But the high emotional level also extends to being dazzled by beauty Women in distress Well not the usual sort Stella is particularly unwell but seems less stressed than enthralled by it Cora is a modern woman so no poor weak thing act being performed There is plenty of the vocabulary of the gothic For example chapter one begins One o clock on a dreary dayThere is also the romantic element in the gothic approach The Will Cora connection has already been mentioned There are a few other connections of this sort that are addressed But the overwhelming connection throughout the book is of friendship even if the lines between where friendship leaves off and another kind of relationship picks up can be a bit murky and even if love is the beating heart of all sorts of friendships What I absolutely didn t want to do was to write a book about two people who madly fancy each other and at the end of the book they fall in love and they get married That s so tiresome and life is so much rich and complex and complicated than that I wanted to write about a relationship that is intimate and tender and exciting and even erotic but not a conventional boy meets girl and they re soulmates and they live happy ever after storyPerry aimed to write about as many different kinds of friendship love as I could find Ones which blur the boundaries between romantic love and friendship seeing sexual desire as something cathartic and benevolent even when it s not connected to any kind of romantic attachment I still maintain that Cora and Will are basically friends but that their friendship is capacious and different and subject to change as human relationships are from the Waterstones interview There are external elements throughout the book that buttress both nature and the sublime Perry has the eye of a naturalist She makes considerable and stunning use of this talent to breathe life into her landscapes When the rain set in she delved deeper between the trees turning her face to the featureless sky It was a uniform grey without shifting of clouds or sudden blue breaks and no sign at all of the sun it was an unwritten sheet of paper and against it the bare branches were black It ought to have been dreary but Cora saw only beauty birches unfurled their strips of bark like lengths of white cloths and under her feet wet leaves were slick Everywhere bright moss had taken hold in dense wads of green fur swaddling the trees at their foot and fine pelts on broken branches that lay across the path There are plenty bits of this here Stella adds a particularly ethereal appreciation for the color blue both in its natural state and as manufactured Blue in fact tints the novel for a considerable swath in a way that is both beautiful and alarming Cora s son Francis has an interest in the natural world as well and offers some insights although he lacks the experience to be able to interpret what he observes There is a rich supply of secondary characters some of whom receive starring role treatment They serve to illuminate issues of the day One is a doctor on the cutting edge of his profession another a memorable local who will mar your dreams with visions of unspeakable fence decorations and resident earwigs Martha s social activism highlights the housing issues in London but also a sexual freedom that addresses the constraints of Victorian s Perry is not a satirist but she does offer a particularly delicious line from one of her supporting cast someone who dismisses notions of a returned monster I m uite religious you know no patience for the supernaturalAs for gripes blissfully few The vanishing of one young lass lacked a persuasive rationale I thought There was one scene late in the book that I found a bit off putting but it would be too spoilerish to note it here Neither of these imperiled for me the overall High Risk Affair Silhouette Intimate Moments joy I experienced reading this book For me the notion of the bliss of the beautiful that permeates TES can be summed up in a line from Cora It was Monophobia 1 just the light she said up to its old tricks But how was my heart to know A wondrous read satisfying to both heart and mind The Essex Serpent is a spectacular achievement a masterpiece by a gifted writer at the peak of her powerReview posted 32417Publication May 27 2016 the original hardcover in the UK June 6 2017 by Custom House in the USA April 24 2018 trade paperNovember 15 2017 The Essex Serpent is named one of the top fifty notable works of fiction of the year by The Washington PostNovember 22 2017 The Essex Serpent is named one of its 100 Notable Books of the year by The New York TimesEXTRA STUFFLinks to the author s personal and Twitter pages You should know that as of the date of this post her personal site was still under constructionInterviews The Guardian The Essex Serpent author Sarah Perry Kids at school found me strange I didn t mind interview by Emine Saner FiveBookscom Sarah Perry recommends the best Gothic Fiction Interview by Beatrice Wilford December 1 2016 Waterstones The Book Perry Was Meant to Write by Sally Campbell December 10 2016 The Essex Serpent British Library On the trail of the Essex Serpent Perry describes her encounter with the original 1669 pamphlet that inspired the novelThe Gothic Novel A fabulous lesson This is where I got the list of Gothic novel characteristics I used for that part of the review Elements of the Gothic Novel A wonderful video from Studycom Gothic Novels Characteristics Examples it is limited though One must be a subscriber to see it all Still worth a lookFWIW In classical mythology Cora or Kore was another name of Persephone goddess of fertility and the underworld from nameberrycom