The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry. Custom House, 2016

When Cora Seaborne’s husband dies, no one in the household is sorry. He was a sadistic and abusive man, who leaves Cora with scars both physical and mental to remember him by. But he also leaves her with a bit of money, so she no longer has to stay in the mansion with the bad memories; she, her autistic son Francis, and her socialist companion Martha move to a village in Essex, where she hopes to find fossils like Mary Anning is doing. There she meets the Ransomes: William the vicar, his wife Stella, and their three children. Cora and Stella immediately take to each other as if they had grown up together; Cora and William find themselves in a different sort of friendship, arguing in a jovial way, frequently via letter. But all is not fun and games in Aldwinter; the legendary Essex sea monster (a real bit of Essex folklore) seems to be back, drowning young men, stealing goats, and generally scaring the people silly even though no one has seen it.

This is a book you climb into and live in with the characters. The descriptions of nature, of people, and especially of Stella are the literary equivalent of pre-Raphaelite paintings; exquisitely detailed and saturated with life. There is a great cast of characters, and intellectual and social issues are explored. I loved this novel; there is a lot of depth to it. Five stars. 

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Victoria the Queen, by Julia Baird. Random House, 2016

To write this new biography of Queen Victoria, Baird got unprecedented access to Royal Archives. Victoria’s daughter, Beatrice, had been left with the job of expurgating Victoria’s journals and letters and she did quite a hatchet job on them, removing anything that might cause her mother to be seen in a less than perfect light. What she didn’t realize was that someone at the Archives took a photo of each page, preserving Victoria’s words. Baird was given access to this treasure trove. This allows us to see the dichotomy that Victoria lived with in more detail than in the past; women of her day were supposed to be meek and submissive, while she ruled the biggest empire England ever had. Wives were supposed to obey their husbands, but her husband was consort and prince only and not the king. Women were pretty much seen as being sexless, while Victoria had a strong libido and enjoyed having sex (the Victorian era’s extreme sexual modesty actually came from Prince Albert, not Victoria). Women were supposed to be natural mothers; she hated being pregnant and was ambivalent about children.  She was the supreme ruler of the Empire, but didn’t believe women should be able to vote.

Most of the book is, of course, nothing new. Her reign has been well documented already. Baird’s writing style leaves something to be desired- she will be writing about one subject, then take off on a tangent like a dog going “Squirrel!”. Some things are out of chronological order, which is confusing. But I found the book mostly very interesting (I really had little interest in the details of her dealings with Parliament), despite already knowing a fair bit about Victoria. Don’t expect anything earthshaking, but rather a portrait of a complex woman about whom many myths have been woven. 

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The Honeymoon, by Dinitia Smith. Other Press, 2016

  

Dinitia Smith has done more than written a fictionalized biography of George Eliot; she’s recreated the woman and her world. Eliot- the pen name of Marian Evans, taken because woman authors were not taken seriously back then- lives and breathes in these pages.

The story is framed by what is happening in 1880, when Marian is supposed to be enjoying her honeymoon with John Cross in Venice. She’s not enjoying herself, though; Johnnie- who is twenty years younger than Marian- is behaving oddly, manic and not his usual caring and supportive self. During this time, Marian remembers her life, starting with her girlhood.

Eliot started life in a rural middle class family. Considered not to be marriage material because of her plain looks, she was encouraged in her studies as her father felt she could become a governess. Luck had it that she was given the run of a private library where she could indulge her joy in reading and learning. She falls in with free thinkers and polyamorous couples, and has a couple of relationships. But she want more; she wants a relationship where she is the primary, not an extra. Then she and George Lewes fall in love, and they have a happy, 26 year relationship until he dies. The laws would not allow them to marry, even though his wife had bourn multiple children to her lover. Lewes had allowed the children to bear his name- which meant he was aware of her adultery, considered a horrible thing, unlike his own relationship with Marian.

This relationship provided a goad for Marian to start earning real money. While she had done translating and was an editor of many works, she had not written her own pieces. Now she did, and became a best seller. Lewes was an author as well, but not nearly so popular as Marian, and they had to support not just themselves, and Lewes biological children, but his wife’s children by her lover, who contributed not a penny to their upkeep. Thankfully, Marian is able to do this, and put away enough money for the rest of her life, thanks to the management of John Cross. Cross is asked by Lewes to take care of Marian. Whether Lewes ever considered that it would be by marrying Marian, this is how Cross felt he could best do it. He truly loved Marian, although apparently not in a physical way. Smith presents him as possibly being gay, as well as having a hereditary form of unipolar mania.

I felt like I was living in Marian’s world. Smith truly inhabited Marian as a brilliant but insecure woman who was told from day one she was not marriage material because of her looks. I loved the passages describing how she worked and developed her novels before writing them- I’m always a sucker for descriptions of the artistic process. I’m ashamed to say I’ve not read Eliot’s work- something I’ll fix soon- but I was very impressed by her writing procedure and the amount of research that went into her novels.

The author also did a huge amount of research, going into mountains of letters written by and to Eliot and others. Some of her lines are lifted straight from Eliot’s own words. She also examined biographies not just of Eliot but of the people in her life, as well as reading Eliot’s work, some of which, while fiction, is also semi-autobiographical. It’s a solid story as well as an absorbing one. 

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