Review of ‘The Essex Serpent’ by Sarah Perry

This was an unusual novel, but a very enjoyable read.

Of course I’m biased in its favour because it’s set in Essex, county of my birth. In fact, it’s set alongside the very same Blackwater Estuary into which I fell as a child, in a sort of baptism of stinking black mud. I would have enjoyed this novel for the setting and memories alone.

I was interested, too, in the portrayal of an autistic boy in a time before autism was a recognised condition. It was subtly done, and I appreciated the way the boy was viewed, even by his own mother, with a kind of baffled incomprehension.

If the book had a topic, it was the clash of religion and science. In a way. But not in the sense of a rational argument, more as a study of relationships within the sensibilities of the Victorian era, which happened to feature a woman of science and a man of religion.

The ending, though, was strangely anticlimactic. For a novel whose heart was in the relationships between its characters, and in which the search for the Essex serpent was merely a means to explore this, ‘discovery of the serpent’ could not be enough. I needed more resolution.

Overall, though, this was a story told with impressive competence and well worth a read.