I’ve been hearing about The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry, for over a year. I was so jealous that the British bookish folk got to read it first and I had to wait for it to be published over here. In retrospect, my envy was a fitting response to a book that deals so much with that very emotion. The plot summaries focus on the hunt for the serpent of the title in the not-so-wilds of Essex, but what I found was a story about people who grew jealous when their friends found other people to play with. The actual serpent plays only a small role in this novel, unless you consider the worm of jealousy that lives in so many of the characters’ hearts as the real snake.
For a long time, Cora Seaborne has only had one friend: her son’s nurse, Martha. That all changes once Cora is widowed. Once she’s free of her sadistic husband, Cora is able to live as she likes. She doesn’t have to conform to her husband’s desires anymore. She can finally indulge in her own desire of becoming the next Mary Anning and finding a new species of prehistoric life. When she travels out to Essex from London, following rumors of an ancient serpent that is supposed to haunt the River Blackwater, Martha and Cora’s family doctor, Luke, don’t like the changes. They really don’t like it when Cora gets friendly with the vicar in Aldwinter, who was introduced to Cora by a mutual friend.
Cora and the Reverend William Ransome are unusual friends. Will is a man of faith. Cora is a woman of science. They have (mostly) good-natured arguments with each other about conflicting points of religion and science. Martha and Luke (who hoped that Cora might fall in love with him) resent the way Cora drops their close companionship to spend time with her new friend. As I read, I saw this theme repeated over and over. One character, much loved, would find someone or something new to occupy their time and whoever was left behind would grow jealous and resentful.
I’ve never read a book about jealous like this one. Most books about jealousy that I’ve run across look at characters who are jealous of another’s material or romantic success. This jealous of a friend’s new friend reminds me a lot of the drama I encountered in junior high (that nest of vipers) when girls would add and drop friends faster than they would change their outfits. As The Essex Serpent shows us, sometimes that jealousy doesn’t go away for some people.
I wasn’t satisfied by The Essex Serpent the way I had hoped. I wanted more of the rumored serpent. I wanted more of the moments when Cora and Will saw seemingly magical phenomena that turned out to have a scientific explanation; those chapters were exactly what I wanted and expected. I definitely didn’t want Luke and his “friend zone.” Perhaps there were too many characters and too many plot lines for this book to jell for me. To be honest, I’m not even sure I really understood what The Essex Serpent was trying to tell me—unless it really was all about jealousy from the beginning, not the mythical serpent, and there’s some symbolism I’m not picking up on.
I’d be very interested to hear from other readers about this book. What did you think of The Essex Serpent?