"The Essex Serpent" by Sarah Perry (Serpent's Tail, 2016)

London, 1893. Dr Luke Garrett (32, short, lame - nicknamed "the Imp") has fallen in love with Cora Seaborne, young widow of one of his patients. He's barely solvent. She encourages him. He has a tall, fair friend, George Spenser. After the funeral, Cora goes with maid Martha (a socialist) and son Francis (11, obsessive) to Colchester. She's not sad. She enjoys nature, collecting fossils. She's told about the Essex Serpent, a winged water-dragon that appeared in the area in 1669 then disappeared until an earthquake 8 years before re-awakened it. Charles (a political colleague of her late husband who's worried about Darwin's ideas) and his wife Katherine happen to be there. They suggest that she stay with William Ransome (a parson who lives on the nearby estuary at Aldwinter) and his wife Stella to explore nature. Their children are John, Joanna and James. Martha dislikes Spenser, though he likes her and donates money to her social housing cause. Garrett become famous among peers for successfully performing a difficult operation in Edward Burton, the victim of a knife attack. Martha subsequently befriends him because of his difficult housing situation.

Cora, Martha and Francis move to Adwinter. Cora tells William that he's wasting a good mind on religion - myth and legend. They both see a ship - an illusion. Cracknell is an old believer who once groped her. He fears the water-dragon. Martha influences William's clever daughter Joanna, who drifts from her friend Naomi. Cora gives a talk about fossils at Joanna's school. She doesn't rule out the existence of the water-dragon. The class of children seem possessed for a while. She asks Luke to visit her and help. Garret hypnotises Joanna. Her father is furious and severs contact with Cora. Cora returns to London.

Stella has consumption. At her prompting, Cora and William dance together, which angers Garrett, who sleeps with Martha. Willian defaces an old carving of the water serpent in his church. Cracknell dies - a victim of the serpent? Naomi disappears. Back in London, Edward's attacker attacks Garrett, damaging his right hand. Garrett proposes to Cora. Edward proposes to Martha. Both are rejected.

One morning there's a stench over the village. They go to the shore and find a 20ft rotting fish. The village celebrates - the mystery explained. Katherine contacts Cora to update her and question how she's cut herself off from Garrett and the Ransomes. Cora restores contact. She visits Stella, who's obsessed with all things blue and gets on well with Francis. Then Cora meets William in a field and they have sex after arguing. Meanwhile, Garrett considers suicide. What changes his mind is Spenser's friendship, though he hits Spenser when he next sees him, blaming him. Francis and Naomi's father think they see/hear a monster. Naomi is found in Colchester. She and Joanna, friends again, think they see/hear a monster. It's Naomi's father's lost boat, named after his dead wife. Stella is found by the water. Francis has helped her there. Martha is with Edward.

I remained interested, wondering where the various subplots would go. 2 little things -

• I like "I've never liked the look of you (do you mind?). But I seem to have learned you by heart" (p.259 - William in a letter to Cora)
• In "his visitor dredged her chips with vinegar" (p.203) should that be "drenched"?

Other reviews

• novelnotions
• M John Harrison (a novel of ideas, though its sensibility is firmly, consciously, even a little cheekily, gothic ... Perry artfully exploits her monster’s symbolic potential, leaving the reader to sort the many subtexts from the good red herrings, displaying both with a collectorly enthusiasm, on equal terms)
• julias-books (Perry also explores the position of women, from Cora, the scientist, for whom marriage had “so degraded her expectations of happiness” and for whom widowhood and thus the single life had “freed her from the obligation to be beautiful”, to Stella the model dutiful Victorian wife and mother, afflicted by a quintessentially 19th century illness. There is also Martha, Cora’s maid (although her exact position in the household slightly defies definition!), also a political activist who utilises the connections she has made through Cora to further her Marxist leanings.)
• j.d.levin (For the first 100+ pages, Perry's book wanders and winds through several seemingly unconnected storylines, leaving the reader without much of a solid thread to follow. ... many readers will undoubtedly meander through chapter after chapter of passable prose until stumbling upon a profound passage or plot point. Perry is strongest when she subverts expectations - which she does frequently throughout the novel.)
• bookssnob (the issue that I have with most modern fiction is the trend to have several plots happening at once, with a wide cast of characters doing things that are entirely unnecessary to the main story and are merely there for some sort of metaphorical significance. Such is the case with The Essex Serpent. What could have been a marvellously thought provoking novel about the conflict between faith, science, reason and doubt in the nineteenth century became a series of diluted romances between people who didn’t really seem to interact with or be necessary to one another at all, and the actual story of the serpent did get rather lost somewhere along the way.)