The Serpent’s Tale: Story
The narrative style of The Serpent’s Tale takes its inspiration from the ancient art of oral storytelling and from the belief that each of us has our own unique story to tell. The matryoshka set of storytellers draws the reader from the autobiographical ‘The Mother’s Tale’ to ‘The Nurse’s Tale’ to the core events of ‘The Serpent’s Tale’, in which the characters narrate stories from their lives and from mythology.
In ‘The Mother’s Tale’, the author Annabel Du Boulay asks the universal question ‘why do children suffer?’. The response comes from a nurse in ‘The Nurse’s Tale’, who tells her a story that was told to her Italian ancestors by an old travelling storyteller in 1645.
‘The Storyteller’s Tale’ describes the dramatic events that happened to a rural community in southern Italy in 1583 when their lives were governed by the Roman Church and the horrors of its Inquisition. Drawing on the revenge tragedies of the Renaissance period, the novel sees the protagonist Alessandro arrive in the village of Santa Sofia driven by his desire for revenge and conspire with the villagers to overthrow the Bishop. During the ensuing seven days, their lives are changed forever as they fight to protect their wisewoman from the fires of the Inquisition.
An allegorical novel, The Serpent’s Tale explores a mother’s search for meaning, leading the reader on an inspiring journey rooted in the philosophy of the Myth of Sophia, which stems back over twenty thousand years to the birth of our world mythology of a Mother Goddess and her Son-Lover God. Patriarchal religion’s historic manipulation and distortion of this mythology in order to control women in society becomes chillingly apparent, as the female protagonists are subjected to abuse, rape, torture and ultimately death in the name of God. As a novel for our time, The Serpent’s Tale sheds light on the current global crisis which sees a billion women beaten, abused or raped in their lifetime.
Yet within this shadow of suffering, the light of wisdom shines through the pages, leaving the reader ultimately with a deep sense of hope.
