Category: Friday Book Snippets

The Essex Serpent: Friday Book Snippets

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Friday Book Snippets combining Book Beginnings on Friday and the Friday 56, is co-hosted by Anne@HeadFullofBooks and Olivia at Bemused and Bookish.

Directions: Share two snippets (a sentence or short paragraph) from a) the book’s opening and b) page 56 (or another page) from the book you are currently reading. No spoilers, please. 

This week I’m featuring The Essex Serpent by Sarah Parry, one of the recent additions to my TBRS. I first heard about this book when it was first published four years ago and read rave reviews singing its praise. So when I saw it was one of the 99p books on Kindle in September I snapped it up.

Book beginning, New Year’s Eve:

A young man walks down by the banks of the Blackwater under the full cold moon. He’s been drinking the old year down to the dregs, until his eyes grew sore and his stomach turned, and he was tired of the bright lights and bustle.

Second snippet: Page 56

She has recently come to Essex together with her son and companion in order to study the coastline there (something about fossil bird remains at Walton -on-Naze, I believe) and has been staying in Colchester. Of course I told her about the legend of the Essex Serpent and the rumours of its return, and about the curious carving in All Saints church, and she was most intrigued, and plans to visit.

Description from Goodreads:

Sarah Perry’s award-winning novel, set at the end of the nineteenth century and inspired by true events.

Moving between Essex and London, myth and modernity, Cora Seaborne’s spirited search for the Essex Serpent encourages all around her to test their allegiance to faith or reason in an age of rapid scientific advancement. At the same time, the novel explores the boundaries of love and friendship and the allegiances that we have to one another. The depth of feeling that the inhabitants of Aldwinter share are matched by their city counterparts as they strive to find the courage to express and understand their deepest desires, and strongest fears.

Brat Farrar: Friday Book Snippets

Published on by Margaret16 Comments

Friday Book Snippets combining Book Beginnings on Friday and the Friday 56, is co-hosted by Anne@HeadFullofBooks and Olivia at Bemused and Bookish.

Directions: Share two snippets (a sentence or short paragraph) from a) the book’s opening and b) page 56 (or another page) from the book you are currently reading. No spoilers, please. 

I’m currently reading Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey, a novel about the Ashbys, an English country-squire family, first published in 1949.

Book beginning, Chapter One:

‘Aunt Bree,’ said Jane, breathing heavily into her soup, was Noah a cleverer back-room boy than Ulysses, or was Ulysses a cleverer back-room boy than Noah?’

Second snippet: Page 6

How shadowy was he to her: the kind solemn little boy who should have been coming into his inheritance next month? She tried to call up his face in front of her but there was only a blur. He had been small and immature for his age, but otherwise he was just an Ashby. Less an individual than a family resemblance.

Description from Amazon UK:

Young orphan, Brat Farrar, closely resembles the dead heir to Latchetts, a centuries-old family estate on the south coast of England. Against his better judgement, Brat is persuaded to pose as Patrick Ashby, the true heir, and claim the inheritance. Most of the Ashbys accept the imposter, only one suspects him, but his reasons are so strange that Brat comes to believe something very evil has happened to Patrick…

It Could Have Been Her: Friday Book Snippets

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Today I am pleased to welcome a new weekly event. It is Friday Book Snippets, combining Book Beginnings on Friday and Friday56, co-hosted by Anne@HeadFullofBooks and Olivia at Bemused and Bookish.

Directions: Share two snippets (a sentence or short paragraph) from a) the book’s opening and b) page 56 (or another page) from the book you are currently reading. No spoilers, please. 

I like this idea of using any page number for the second snippet.

One of the books I’m currently reading is It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell. This is her latest book, published in June this year.

The book begins with a Prologue:

4 June 2005

I liked the girl. She had a nice smile. She was friendly. I could tell she liked us.

Page 4:

On the eighth day of May 2026, Jane Trevally does something terrifying.

She invites an estate agent into her home.

Page 51:

She has never told Tony about the night she went home with a complete stranger on the flimsy promise of a job. She’s certain he would not judge her, not all these years later, but still, she can’t quite bring herself to let him see the desperate broken fool she’d once been.

Description from Amazon UK:

It was the night she almost died.

Newly divorced and feeling a little lost, Jane Trevally agrees to accompany a man she doesn’t know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath.

She’s offered a drink. She steps inside.

And then she hears a scream.

Jane runs.

Twenty five years later, Jane finds herself outside the same house, this time to return a dog who’s been found near her home. A dog whose owner has just been reported missing.

A fleeting glimpse of a haunted looking woman through the window sends Jane on a mission to uncover the house’s secrets – secrets more terrifying than she could have ever imagined.

And she can’t stop thinking:

It could have been her . . .

I’ve enjoyed all of Lisa Jewell’s books that I’ve read, so it’s no surprise that this one too is promising to be just as good.