Hermione Eyre

Viper Wine is a fantasy riff on the lives of real historical characters Sir Kenelm Digby and his wife Venetia Stanley in 1630s England. Kenelm is an explorer, pirate, alchemist, scientist, philosopher and - in this fantasy world - a time traveller. Venetia is a great beauty, a gambler and stalwart at King Charles I court. Venetia is concerned that her beauty will fade as she ages, but Kenelm is convinced she is wrong. Venetia approaches doctor Lancelot Choice to obtain a beauty tonic - Viper show more Wine - that helps to maintain, even restore, her looks. But this is where things start to go wrong.

Even in the swirling mix of magic, fantasy and modern day intrusions into 17th century life, it is a shock to realise that much of what we read is actually true - Kenelm and Venetia were ahead of the curve in English society and thought and he did invent some crazy stuff.

This is an exciting, vivid trip into a past that looks into a future - a magical mystery tour that amazes, shocks and saddens as we move to the inevitable tragedy at the core of the book. Highly recommended. show less

Venetia Stanley and her husband, Sir Kenelm Digby, were real people. She really did die mysteriously. Wealthy ladies of the time really did buy and apply and ingest all sorts of potions guaranteed to make them youthful again- or, at the very least, arrest aging. Digby really did have Anthony Van Dyck paint her portrait after her death.

In this book, Digby’s mind picks up on voices from the future. He has a radio mast in his backyard, although it’s 1632. Sometimes he sees his estate, show more Gayhurst, as it will be in four centuries, used for Alan Turing’s Enigma Machine. Perhaps this is why he frequently seems to be not quite all there. Venetia, once thought a great beauty, is now facing being thirty years of age- ancient, to the people of that era. She has two children; she cannot be the fascinating and beautiful woman she once was. And, sadly, that’s all she knows how to be. When she hears of potions that can make a person young and beautiful, she begs her husband-an alchemist- to make her some. When he refuses, feeling that she is so beautiful she could not be improved upon, she seeks help from her circle of women friends at court. Despite youth formulas sometimes horrible side effects, most of the ladies of the court are using them. And some of them really work.

I’m not sure the decision to make this story magical realism really worked. While the fact that the potions really functioned - how they could ruin a woman as easily as make them young- added to the story, I didn’t feel that the 21st century bleeding through really added anything. It was, as they say in The Simpson’s, “Weird for the sake of weird”.

I felt sorry for Venetia; she was merely fulfilling the role given to titled women in those days, but her inability to be anything *other* than a beauty was frustrating. She was a good mother, but even that was background to her looks. The time slippage allows the author to draw parallels to our age’s obsession with youth and the things women will go through to stave off the signs of aging, but it wasn’t really needed. It was pretty obvious what her view of that was without it. The prose is lovely, but the whole thing just didn’t come together in the end. It was, sadly, boring. show less

This is a *weird* book - mostly historical fiction about Venetia, Lady Digby, wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, an alchemist of the court of King Charles I. But it reaches the level of experimental fiction (I can't quite say historical fantasy) in the way it takes Kenelm's alchemy seriously and rewards him with visions of the future, flashes of insight from modern times, scattered anachronisms throughout the text. And yet it never quite becomes one of those books where you feel like you know less show more about history because of the anachronisms: the narrator's voice is strong enough for that, at least. This is definitely not a book for everyone, but I found I enjoyed it quite a lot. show less

I loved this - it's brilliant and funny and well researched and just a little off-putting. It reminds me of one of my very favorite novels Orlando in that it is a historical novel but told with a contemporary twist. Eyre really has fun with our addicition to lasting beauty. There are a few misteps, but it didn't matter to me. I like this kind of ambitious novel that really takes chances.

Great, great novel.