The Essex Serpent ★★★★☆

Read it more for the mood and for the sadness of dashed fears, unrequited love, loss of purpose, and abject poverty than for the is-it-real monster hiding in the fog and the tides.

Edition Read

• Edition Type: Hardcover
• Number of Pages: 422 pages
• Date First Published: May 27, 2016
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• ISBN10: 0062666371
• ASIN: 0062666371
• Language: English

Description

Sarah Perry's award-winning novel, set at the end of the nineteenth century and inspired by true events.

Moving between Essex and London, myth and modernity, Cora Seaborne's spirited search for the Essex Serpent encourages all around her to test their allegiance to faith or reason in an age of rapid scientific advancement. At the same time, the novel explores the boundaries of love and friendship and the allegiances that we have to one another. The depth of feeling that the inhabitants of Aldwinter share are matched by their city counterparts as they strive to find the courage to express and understand their deepest desires, and strongest fears.

Source: GoodReads

Notable Highlights

sometimes I think we must be walking on shoals of bodies without realizing it and all the earth’s a graveyard.” [loc. 1236]

It seemed to her that the city’s bricks were red with the blood of its citizens, its mortar pale with the dust of their bones; that deep in its foundations women and children lay head to toe in buried ranks, bearing up the city on their backs. [loc. 1289]