0:00:00 > 0:00:03Now it's time for Meet The Author.
0:00:03 > 0:00:06Faith and reason, and the Gothic imagination, the ingredients
0:00:06 > 0:00:10of Sarah Perry's bestselling novel, The Essex Serpent.
0:00:10 > 0:00:14We're in the 1890s and Cora Seaborne, newly widowed,
0:00:14 > 0:00:17leaves London for the country, where she encounters a community
0:00:17 > 0:00:21terrified by the apparent return of a fabled monster.
0:00:21 > 0:00:24Her interest in nature leads her to believe that it's real.
0:00:24 > 0:00:28The local vicar believes it's the product of a pagan imagination.
0:00:28 > 0:00:30They argue a good deal.
0:00:30 > 0:00:32They also, more or less, fall in love.
0:00:32 > 0:00:37It's a rich tale of obsession, mystery and belief.
0:00:37 > 0:00:41Welcome.
0:00:53 > 0:00:57I suppose it's a story, really, about fear, isn't it?
0:00:57 > 0:00:58It is.
0:00:58 > 0:01:01And it's a story about the way that fear affects from people
0:01:01 > 0:01:05in different ways, according to their age, their gender,
0:01:05 > 0:01:08their preconceived ideas about the world.
0:01:08 > 0:01:12And how an imagined, or unimagined, monster can be very different
0:01:12 > 0:01:14to different sets of people.
0:01:14 > 0:01:18There's a sense in which it's a period which reflects some
0:01:18 > 0:01:19of the obsessions of our own?
0:01:19 > 0:01:20Very much so.
0:01:20 > 0:01:23One of the things I wanted to do was, in perhaps
0:01:23 > 0:01:25a slightly mischievous way, wrong-foot the reader,
0:01:25 > 0:01:28who might feel that they're reading a Victorian novel,
0:01:28 > 0:01:32set in the world of crinolines and fainting wives, pea-soupers,
0:01:32 > 0:01:35and instead find themselves reading about the Trades Union Congress,
0:01:35 > 0:01:38the London Underground, the birth of feminism,
0:01:39 > 0:01:40scientific developments.
0:01:40 > 0:01:44So I wanted to invite the reader to interrogate how far we've come
0:01:44 > 0:01:47since the end of the 19th century and whether the end of the 19th
0:01:47 > 0:01:50century was actually more modern than we ever allow
0:01:50 > 0:01:51ourselves to think.
0:01:51 > 0:01:55And at the heart of the story is the argument, really,
0:01:55 > 0:01:59between two people who also then have a romantic attachment.
0:01:59 > 0:02:04The vicar, who is married, and the newly widowed woman
0:02:04 > 0:02:05who arrives in the country.
0:02:05 > 0:02:09Of course, they have a very different response to this apparent
0:02:09 > 0:02:12appearance of a serpent, a monster in the midst
0:02:12 > 0:02:13of the community.
0:02:13 > 0:02:16She thinks it's a natural event, because she wants
0:02:16 > 0:02:22it to be a dinosaur.
0:02:22 > 0:02:25He says it's all got to do with a breakdown in faith.
0:02:25 > 0:02:26Yeah.
0:02:26 > 0:02:27A very interesting collision.
0:02:27 > 0:02:28It is.
0:02:28 > 0:02:31I think that's another reason why the end of the 19th century
0:02:31 > 0:02:32are so interesting for me.
0:02:32 > 0:02:34I think debates around science and reason, the extent
0:02:34 > 0:02:37to which faith and science are antagonists, and whether or not
0:02:37 > 0:02:38they can support each other.
0:02:38 > 0:02:39Or if they are?
0:02:39 > 0:02:40Or if they are, precisely.
0:02:40 > 0:02:43It's something that is very much part of the dialogue now
0:02:43 > 0:02:47and is a debate that's been going on for a very long time.
0:02:47 > 0:02:50What I wanted to do was disrupt the idea that a man of faith
0:02:50 > 0:02:57like Will would be a man of superstition and fear.
0:02:57 > 0:02:59Actually, he's presented as being a man of reason.
0:02:59 > 0:03:02And that a man of science, like Cora, or a woman of science,
0:03:02 > 0:03:04like Cora, would be the reasonable and rational one.
0:03:04 > 0:03:11Actually, she is rather given to emotional display and not
0:03:11 > 0:03:12getting things quite right.
0:03:12 > 0:03:13Well, indeed.
0:03:13 > 0:03:16And the distinction is not as clear as we might first think?
0:03:16 > 0:03:17Exactly.
0:03:17 > 0:03:19The intriguing thing about your story is that there
0:03:19 > 0:03:21is the excitement of how to interpret this phenomenon that
0:03:21 > 0:03:24apparently has turned up in the community.
0:03:24 > 0:03:26But alongside it is, if you'll forgive me
0:03:26 > 0:03:27putting it like this, in this phrase,
0:03:27 > 0:03:28an old-fashioned love story?
0:03:28 > 0:03:31I wanted to present a relationship that seemed to be somewhere
0:03:31 > 0:03:34on a slightly indefinable spectrum, between an intellectual curiosity
0:03:34 > 0:03:38and an argument that comes between intellectual opposites.
0:03:38 > 0:03:41Emotional intimacy and romance, at what point does it switch
0:03:41 > 0:03:43from one thing to another?
0:03:43 > 0:03:45I think it's important to say to people that
0:03:45 > 0:03:48haven't read the book yet, perhaps, that although you have
0:03:48 > 0:03:52these ideas running through your head and you wanted to communicate
0:03:52 > 0:03:54the nature of this argument to the reader,
0:03:54 > 0:03:56in the end, it's a story.
0:03:56 > 0:03:58I mean, it's a story about a community that is gripped
0:03:58 > 0:04:00by fear and excitement.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03That is what draws the reader in?
0:04:03 > 0:04:04I hope so.
0:04:04 > 0:04:06More than anything else, I'm a storyteller.
0:04:06 > 0:04:09I'm a great spinner of yarns.
0:04:09 > 0:04:12I'm given to boring on at great length about anecdotes
0:04:12 > 0:04:15around family and friends, things that have happened to myself.
0:04:15 > 0:04:18That's what a good novel does.
0:04:18 > 0:04:20Ideally, however high the ideas, however much you want to interest
0:04:20 > 0:04:24or educate, really it should be about a cracking story that can pass
0:04:24 > 0:04:26the time on a wet weekend.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29But it's also true that what you display in this book,
0:04:29 > 0:04:33which is a wonderful read, enthralling read, is an affection
0:04:33 > 0:04:35for the Gothic imagination.
0:04:35 > 0:04:37I mean, it's a kind of Gothic novel, isn't it?
0:04:37 > 0:04:38Very much so.
0:04:38 > 0:04:42I'm very, very interested in what he Gothic actually is.
0:04:42 > 0:04:45Interestingly, you could lock three or four academics in a room,
0:04:45 > 0:04:48with no bread or water for ten hours, and not let them out
0:04:48 > 0:04:50until they have agreed on a definition of the Gothic.
0:04:50 > 0:04:52They'll starve, because it's something that people
0:04:52 > 0:04:53are constantly debating.
0:04:53 > 0:04:56The Gothic is a feeling.
0:04:56 > 0:04:57It's a sensation, is not a genre.
0:04:57 > 0:05:00It's the feeling that there is something that we
0:05:00 > 0:05:02don't quite understand.
0:05:02 > 0:05:05"Am I mad, or did I just see that thing?
0:05:05 > 0:05:08If I am mad, is that worse than a monster?"
0:05:08 > 0:05:12We all have fears that we, to some degree, enjoy.
0:05:12 > 0:05:16I mean, we enjoy treading on the edge of an abyss, in a way,
0:05:17 > 0:05:22in our minds, don't we?
0:05:22 > 0:05:23That's what we all do.
0:05:23 > 0:05:24We do.
0:05:24 > 0:05:26I think what a really good Gothic novel does,
0:05:26 > 0:05:29what I wanted to try to emulate, his arouse in the reader
0:05:29 > 0:05:31similar sensations to those felt by the characters.
0:05:31 > 0:05:33So, a successful Gothic novel will leave the reader feeling
0:05:33 > 0:05:36as unnerved and as uneasy as the characters who are
0:05:36 > 0:05:37encountering these fears themselves.
0:05:37 > 0:05:40So, a reader of a Gothic text like Dracula would be invited
0:05:40 > 0:05:44to think, what is it that I desire that I ought not to desire?
0:05:44 > 0:05:47So, you're drawn into the book like one of the characters.
0:05:47 > 0:05:53What kind of cracking stories did you grow upon?
0:05:53 > 0:05:55I sense that you've a love for the Victorian novel, just
0:05:55 > 0:05:59by the way you attack this period.
0:05:59 > 0:06:01I mean, attack in a sense of being a writer
0:06:01 > 0:06:03who immerses himself in it?
0:06:03 > 0:06:04Yes.
0:06:04 > 0:06:05I had a very interesting background.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09My parents were members of a strict Baptist chapel and I was brought up
0:06:09 > 0:06:10with very little access to popular culture.
0:06:10 > 0:06:13So, actually, I was raised on the King James Bible,
0:06:13 > 0:06:15which is one succession after the other of cracking yarns.
0:06:15 > 0:06:17Well, if you want to write good English...
0:06:17 > 0:06:19Exactly, in terms of exposure to cracking ideas,
0:06:19 > 0:06:22extraordinary prose, but also one story after another
0:06:22 > 0:06:25of heroism, and betrayal, and mystery, and strangeness,
0:06:25 > 0:06:31and magic, all incorporated in this one book.
0:06:31 > 0:06:33Because we didn't have a television and I didn't go
0:06:33 > 0:06:36to the cinema, and all the rest of it, I immersed myself instead
0:06:36 > 0:06:39in what was available in the house, which tended to be 19th century
0:06:39 > 0:06:42literature, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Bunyan, and what all of these have
0:06:42 > 0:06:44in common is storytelling.
0:06:44 > 0:06:45Yes.
0:06:45 > 0:06:47And so did you always know you were going to be,
0:06:47 > 0:06:49in some form, a storyteller?
0:06:49 > 0:06:51I did, very much so.
0:06:51 > 0:06:53In a way that I find very difficult to convey how
0:06:53 > 0:06:54intense this feeling is.
0:06:54 > 0:06:58The analogy I always use is that most women I know have always known
0:06:58 > 0:07:00that they would one day be a mother.
0:07:00 > 0:07:04I have always known, in that sort of visceral,
0:07:04 > 0:07:08"There's no point in my existing if I don't do it" kind of way, that
0:07:08 > 0:07:09I will tell stories in some way.
0:07:09 > 0:07:12Whatever period I would have been born into, I would have been
0:07:12 > 0:07:14a storyteller of one kind or another.
0:07:14 > 0:07:18What you've done in this book, of course, is to play with,
0:07:18 > 0:07:20but also to respect, a tradition.
0:07:20 > 0:07:25I mean, you enjoy writing a story, telling a story of the kind that
0:07:25 > 0:07:27you grew up reading.
0:07:27 > 0:07:28You're not interested in experiment.
0:07:28 > 0:07:32I mean, you want to obviously do something original
0:07:32 > 0:07:34with your characters, and have them stepping outside
0:07:34 > 0:07:38stereotypes, of course, but you are also paying homage
0:07:38 > 0:07:40to a storytelling tradition that you love?
0:07:40 > 0:07:42That's right.
0:07:42 > 0:07:46What I wanted to do simultaneously pay homage to and interrogate it.
0:07:46 > 0:07:49For example, one of the things I did was shy away from the kind
0:07:49 > 0:07:52of language we associate with 19th-century novels.
0:07:52 > 0:07:53So, nobody rides in a carriage.
0:07:53 > 0:07:55They call a cab.
0:07:55 > 0:07:58People do not speak to Mama and Papa, they speak to Mum and Dad.
0:07:58 > 0:08:01They go to a pub, rather than to an inn.
0:08:01 > 0:08:04In that sense, I was very much enjoying the tropes of 19th-century
0:08:04 > 0:08:08fiction and Gothic fiction, whilst also disrupting the reader
0:08:08 > 0:08:11and saying, you know, this is not a dusty period.
0:08:11 > 0:08:12This is not a dusty novel.
0:08:12 > 0:08:14It's modern, its contemporary.
0:08:14 > 0:08:17Well, I think anybody reading this book would come to the conclusion
0:08:17 > 0:08:19that you might have been quite happy at that time.
0:08:19 > 0:08:21Do you think you would have been?
0:08:21 > 0:08:24Yes, I was born 100 years too late, I suspect.
0:08:24 > 0:08:26Sarah Perry, author of the Essex Serpent,
0:08:26 > 0:08:27thank you very much.
0:08:27 > 0:08:32Thank you.