Enlightenment

by Sarah Perry

A dazzling new work of literary fiction from the author of The Essex Serpent, a story of love and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends.

Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits—torn between their commitment to religion and their desire to explore the world beyond their small Baptist community. It is two romantic relationships that will rend their friendship, and in the wake of this rupture, Thomas develops an obsession with a vanished nineteenth-century astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor, and Grace flees Aldleigh entirely for London.

Over the course of twenty years, by coincidence and design, Thomas and Grace will find their lives brought back into orbit as the mystery of the vanished astronomer unfolds into a devastating tale of love and scientific pursuit. Thomas and Grace will ask themselves what it means to love and be loved, what is fixed and what is mutable, how much of our fate is predestined and written in the stars, and whether they can find their way back to each other.

A thrillingly ambitious novel of friendship, faith, and unrequited love, rich in symmetry and symbolism, Enlightenment is a shimmering wonder of a book and Sarah Perry’s finest work to date. 

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Fantasy, Historical, Religion, Audiobook

384 pages, Hardcover

First published May 2, 2024

About the author

Sarah Perry was born in Essex in 1979, and was raised as a Strict Baptist. Having studied English at Anglia Ruskin University she worked as a civil servant before studying for an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative Writing and the Gothic at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2004 she won the Spectator's Shiva Naipaul Award for travel writing.

In January 2013 she was Writer-in-Residence at Gladstone's Library. Here she completed the final draft of her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood , which was published by Serpent's Tail in June 2014 to international critical acclaim. It won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award 2014, and was longlisted for the 2014 Guardian First Book Award and nominated for the 2014 Folio Prize. In January and February 2016 Sarah was the UNESCO City of Literature Writer-in-Residence in Prague.

Her second novel, The Essex Serpent , was published by Serpent's Tail in May 2016. It was a number one bestseller in hardback, and was named Waterstones Book of the Year 2016. It was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2017, and was longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction 2017, the Wellcome Book Prize, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and the New Angle Prize for Literature. It was broadcast on Radio 4 as a Book at Bedtime in April 2017, is being translated into eleven languages, and has been chosen for the Richard and Judy Summer Book Club 2017.

Sarah has spoken at a number of institutions including Gladstone's Library, the Centre of Theological Inquiry at Princeton, and the Anglo-American University in Prague, on subjects including theology, the history and status of friendship in literature, the Gothic, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Her essays have been published in the Guardian and the Spectator, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She reviews fiction for the Guardian and the Financial Times.

She currently lives in Norwich, where she is completing her third novel.

Reviews

[Jack Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

This reads like a Victorian novel (derogatory) in its excessive level of detail and convoluted sentence structure. Though each individual sentence is well crafted, combined together it mostly reads as tangential nonsense. There are some gorgeous lines but it’s like sifting through sand for hours in search of a few pearls.

Ultimately the story is difficult to follow, and unfortunately the effort to decipher the plot is unrewarding. So much going on and yet…. nothing, really.

[Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times, breathtaking.

Check out my 2024 honorable mentions at Hello, Bookworm. 👈



✨"...you know it is possible to love in such a way that you command reality, that your sight cannot be trusted!"✨

I hardly know how to describe this book: As an elegy to the stars? An ode to love's ability to connect us? An exquisitely crafted tale of friendship and faith? A quiet mystery concerning hidden history? An exemplary tale of scientific discovery? A ghost story? Yes, it's all of that. And more.

The story concerns Thomas Hart, a god-fearing man who leads a double life and dabbles in trading psalms for physics, and Grace Macauley, who ventures into the wider world when the deal she makes with God doesn't go as planned.

Thomas is gifted a planisphere, which launches him on a decades-long search for a nineteenth century astronomer who's rumored to haunt a nearby manor. The astronomer's presence haunts the story, too, and teases the edges of Thomas' conscious.

This gorgeous tale of symbolism and symmetry is studded with articles, letters, and emails. It's a story in which characters rarely say what they truly feel and only dare to whisper their deepest longings. Life often pulls them apart, yet the stars continually draw them back into each other's orbits.

Masterfully crafted with exquisite prose, Enlightenment holds as much wonder as the night sky and is sure to enchant fans of The Essex Serpent.

My heartfelt thanks to the kind people at Mariner Books for gifting me an ARC of this book that I desperately wanted. 💙

--

ORIGINAL POST 👇

Ooooh! New book coming from Sarah Perry. 📘👀

I enjoyed the Gothic undertones of The Essex Serpent, and I especially liked the dark turns she took in Melmoth. Keen to see what surprises await in this book. 🫣

[fatma · Rating 3 out of 5]

sarah perry's writing is lovely, and there are some beautiful passages here, but sadly i found the actual storytelling to be severely lacking. i just never got this story. it felt disjointed and unevenly paced, missing a critical sense of flow that would've made it feel more cohesive and effective as a narrative. it's a long novel: we jump a lot from character to character (some major, some minor), and cover a broad span of time, and altogether i didn't feel like, structurally, these shifts were done very well. i also just found the characters to be extremely frustrating. i didn't understand their decisions, and it's because i didn't understand them.

i don't know. sarah perry is such a stellar writer that i wanted to love this. and though i did genuinely love parts of it, as a novel it just never came together for me.

(thank you to Mariner Books for the eARC!)

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Longlisted for the Booker prize, quite readable, but tries to be two things at once not entirely successfully in my view
The benefits of unrequited love or the Da Vinci code in Essex. Atmospheric but also using a lot of coincidences to get the characters to the point
Isn’t the value of your love set by the heap of your sorrow?

A solemn novel that tries to bring astronomy, faith and love together in a rather contrived manner. The language is lush, and conveys more a feel of 19th century than late 20th and early 21st century (with Enlightenment being set in 1997, 2008, 2017). This Victorian feel extends to how people act and the narrative as well in a certain way. People pine forever for each other, scholars/beggars just pop up with helpful hints, a dress from more than 100 years ago has a note in it, people trip and stumble upon clues…

Either the mystery was not really needed from my perspective and we could have had more internal turmoil from our main characters trying to connect with each other and being scorned or the mystery could have been done more elegantly and sophisticatedly.

Realism of characters (besides realism of events being a bot dodgy due to multiple coincidences) is something I struggled with as well while reading. Especially how Grace holds both grudges and infatuation for an inordinate amount of time, where one would think death of relatives would give some perspective on the teenage “you ruined my life” narrative, feels decidedly immature in the later sections of the novel.

Also so much satin rustles in this novel it becomes almost a meme…

Thomas Hart, in his 50s, balding and working for a local newspaper in Essex is an interesting character in general, feeling from a different time and struggling with his sexuality in the context of his quite strict congregation.
I love how he is typecast by Sarah Perry as: And if it couldn’t be fairly said that he was strange, there was certainly the impression of him being the lone representative of his species
A comet passing is an idea to get Thomas Hart to write about new things for the local newspaper, bringing him in contact with James Bower a married museum employee which brings him on the track of a 19th century woman who observes the heavens.

The whole religious angle being the vocal point of the social life of the main characters social life feels a bit weird for the end of 20th century setting, as is someone’s ostracism in 2008 for being gay. These topics, rejection of the modern world, letting opportunities of romantic connection go by, are important parts of the narrative, with Thomas pining for married James Bower and Grace for Nathan who is a kind of reverse Eve to her religious identity.

The AIDS epidemic monologue by Thomas was quite touching, also in relation to his faith and belief in god. Somehow I felt often quite detached from the narrative, maybe because of how the language and the quasi-Victorian feel, which reminds me of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
Also I never warmed up to Grace, with her later life being painted in fast, impressionistic strokes.

Overall an uneven novel, which I expected to like more based on the theme of astronomy.

Quotes:
He is happy, except when he isn’t

Am I to give my readers nothing but longing and loss?

She had severed herself from herself

So he set the virtue of kindness above truth, and sinned

You are a woman, not an algebraic equation

Isn’t the value of your love set by the heap of your sorrow?

My heart was broken because I was alive

Everything touches everything else

Am I never to be free of my hope for freedom?

[Barbara K · Rating 5 out of 5]

My reaction to this book, a dazzled sense of wonder and deep emotional connection, probably reflects what I've come to realize is my fondness for books that feature characters who aren't quite normal, elements of magical realism, and plots that challenge understanding.

I quickly became lost in Enlightenment and was swept away by it. I'm confident it will be one of my favorite novels of the year. This is one of those books with a quasi-19th century sensibility blended with current values and, especially in this one, scientific knowledge. Perry's previous best-seller, The Essex Serpent, is also set in the English county of Essex (where Perry grew up), but is fully rooted in the past. By contrast, although some of the characters in this book would not need much alteration to slip into a novel written in 1887, Perry's affection for them has a decidedly 20th/21st century cast. And when the principal character, Thomas Hart, attempts to learn more of astronomy, cosmology and physics, discoveries of the past 100 years take center stage.

The events of the book resist easy summarization. It begins in 1997 at the time of the appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet, with a middle section set in 2007 and the closing in 2017. Thomas Hart is a fastidious man whose appearance reflects an earlier time, and who at the beginning of the book, when he is 50 years old, has a dual existence. In the fictional Essex town of Aldleigh he attends a Strict Baptist church, and in London he pursues liaisons with other men. By occupation he is a novelist and columnist for a local newspaper.

He is inexplicably bound to Grace Macauley, whom he met at a church service shortly after her mother had died, when he was in his 30s and she was but a few weeks old. This description of that moment will provide a taste of Perry's writing:

“She had not existed, and then she had, summoned out of whatever matter her consciousness had been made, and had stuck her small bare foot in his door. It was disastrous.”

The friendship - the connection - that develops between these two individuals is at the core of the book, set against a subplot involving a woman, Maria Văduva, who hunted comets and disappeared from the town in 1887. Her ghost becomes a constant in Thomas's life, joined by others as the book progresses. Peripheral characters, while less unique than Thomas and Grace, are lovingly drawn in careful detail, enhancing the overall texture of the book.

The conclusion was particularly satisfying to me, as Perry masterfully draws together all her threads. I was sorry that it was over, but pleased with the resolution.

BTW, the actor Alex Jennings did a lovely job with the narration.

Five stars that you can see without Maria's, or even Thomas's, telescope.

[Trudie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well ... that was a battle of resolve.

I would be hard pressed to think of a book less well-suited to my reading tastes. Style and themes combined to hold me at a far remove. I fear I could write a treatise but I will limit myself to a sort of bullet point of highs and lows.

Positives : Romanian pastries- with Turkish delight in the middle !, mention of goldwork embroidery, first chapter.

Negatives - rustling satin, hissing satin, whispering satin, cheap satin, hip aches, the burrowing wretched child, comet, ooh look what I found in the wall, comet, ooh look what I found in the lake, hip aches, comet, ooh look what I found in the tree. Comets. A bamboozling meditation on God and Science.

Obviously some of this negative response is due to my anathema to the topics in hand but at least some of the problem is length (lack of editing), and a weird tendency to make every character seem like they were from a novel set in 1888 but just happen to occasionally pull on a T-shirt from 1997.

Obviously other opinions exist as this is on the Booker Longlist for 2024. Go Essex I guess.

[Nat K · Rating 5 out of 5]

*** Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize ***

“I notice the moon these days… and never did before.“

The clash of religion and the stars, the cosmos and man’s belief systems. Comets. A haunting. A ghost story. A mystery. Unrequited love. The difficult growing pains of youth, and the more difficult pains of a body growing older.

Written in intervals to coincide with the arrival of the next comet. The book commences in 1997, we revisit our characters in 2007 and bid adieu to them in 2017.

A gentle story bubbling over with turbulent emotion, with the two main characters always striving for something - or someone - who remains just out of reach. Thomas Hart (who is now up there as one of my favourite fictional characters) is a gay man in his 50s living a dual life. Attending mass at the local Baptist Church in the small town where he lives, while his other self seeks what he must via the bright lights of London. Grace Macauley joins us as an eighteen year old on the cusp of rebellion. Having grown up in the Church which Thomas attends (and where her father is the minister), she is questioning everything, especially the religion she was brought up in. Both crave more and are hurt trying to find it.

This is such a glorious book. It’s an absolute slow burn which I was surprised to become so enthralled with. For some reason this put me in mind of The Luminaries, with the night sky and position of the stars playing such an important part of the story.

I’m utterly perplexed as to why this didn’t make it to the Booker Prize shortlist. But then literary prizes often perplex me.

“But I won’t have you think my heart was broken because it was a man I loved. My heart was broken because I am alive.”

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024

This is my personal favourite of the 12 books I have read from this year's list, but I appreciate that many others will disagree and I would not be surprised to see it lose out on shortlisting. It is something of a slow burner, strong on language, character and atmosphere, and very English. I won't even attempt to describe the plot, though some may find its ghost story element a little contrived.

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This took me a little while to get into, but about fifty pages in I was hooked and read it in two sittings. It's a strange, unsettling book. Thomas is a man who lives a dual life. Mostly a sombre, God fearing man who is a pillar of the congregation of the small, chapel community in the Essex town of Aldleigh but also a man who has a secret life in London, cruising bars and clubbing with men who are now dying of AIDS. He thinks of leaving the chapel but stays when he meets Grace. Grace's mother died in childbirth and Grace's bewildered father turns up with her at the chapel, not knowing what to do. Thomas becomes a surrogate parent and believes that he will be able to help Grace break away from the church as she grows. Grace, like Thomas becomes a strange creature, of the world but not entirely in it. Entwined with their stories is a complicated and deeply satisfying story of astronomy, comets, strange hauntings and mysterious women. My description seems unwieldy but it is a deeply satisfying novel that I enjoyed more and more as I read on.

[Melanie Caldicott · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think Sarah Perry and I are a good match. I find the ideas and themes behind her books interesting, her characters original and her prose beautiful. But I always feel like I'm wading through mud reading her writing, grasping pieces of storyline, fascinating details, beautiful sentences, but ultimately struggling to piece it altogether and end up feeling like I am missing something. I really wanted to like this book, but just found it disjointed and confusing. It's a shame, because I enjoyed spending time with the characters, but I couldn't gel with the flow and ended up DNFing this at 36%.
This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is never a good sign when a book prize nominee sends the reader in search of the stated vision for that very award. Past examples that fall into this category - relative to the Booker Prize for Fiction - include Snap, The New Wilderness, Sabrina, and The Wall.

For the record: "Each year, the prize is awarded to what is, in the opinion of our judges, the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. The winning book is a work that not only speaks to our current times, but also one that will endure and join the pantheon of great literature."

Which brings us to Enlightenment. Really? This often awkward mix of astrological science and historical fantasy, marinated in Romance and peppered with stilted dialogue, is expected to both "endure" and "join the pantheon of great literature"? Mercy me. I fear the judges have done Sarah Perry no favors by claiming that this novel rises to that standard. It is the very definition of middle brow.

As for how this particular story, so firmly rooted in nostalgic yearnings for antiquities and the undiscovered past, "speaks to our current times"... I find myself at a loss.

To give credit where it is clearly due, the descriptive language is often extremely beautiful. It is also obvious that the author is both intelligent and passionate. She is fully devoted to these characters, their circumstances, and their journeys. If only I had been able to board that train.

What ultimately undid me was a combination of incessant uncanny coincidences within the narrative, and the repetition of certain visual details and linguistic devices. Barring the occasional oak or copper beech, every tree appears to be a silver birch. Fabrics tend to rasp, rustle, and whisper (making for what I have to assume are noisy closets and armoires). The moon and stars have a predilection for appearing under one specific railway arch. A small cast of characters are miraculously running into one another at just the right time in a variety of obscure locations. Lost artifacts are uncovered with alarming frequency through laughably improbable disruptions in architecture or terrain. And I lost track of the number of major characters suffering needlessly for YEARS from unrequited loves that were set in motion by a kind word, a small bit of shared business,
or something else equally commonplace.

Lovers of Susanna Clarke, Neil Gaiman, or Erin Morgenstern are likely to get on much better with this book than I did.

2.5 stars

[Kasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

**ARC of this book provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review**

I'm not the one to appreciate a slice of life genre books. Usually I find them pretty boring and pointless. Same thing with the stories that are waxing poetic - English is my second language so for majority of the time I am not able to properly appreciate linguistic acrobatics. And yet here I am heartbroken that a very verbose slice of life novel ended.

The main axis of the story is friendship between Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay and thanks to that we are following two very unique perspectives - one of a middle aged gay and one of a coming of age girl. Their relationship is elegantly dissected and you get too see all the parts of their love - the tender and resentful moments, the hurt, the need, the lack of forgiveness. But that's not all! This book also provides a really beautiful meditations about unrequired love, faith and our place in the world. Everything is delivered in a simple yet elegant manner and I was struck by the beauty of some sentences on more than one occasion.

If you are coming here for the plot - this is not a story for you. But if you are here to celebrate the language and ruminate about human condition - you will love this book.

[Ends of the Word · Rating 4 out of 5]

After Melmoth, her masterpiece of “theological Gothic”, Sarah Perry returns with Enlightenment, a novel which is, I would say, more “theological” than “Gothic”. The key character of Perry’s latest work is one Thomas Hart, a newspaper columnist from the Essex town of Aldleigh. Thomas seems a man of another age, always impeccably – if old-fashionedly – dressed. His writing style and choice of subject matter is also quite anachronistic, which is possibly why the newspaper editor encourages him to consider “the moon” as a potential new subject for his column. From this unlikely suggestion, Thomas develops a fascination with astronomy and, parallelly, an obsession with the mysterious figure of Maria Veduva, a 19th century astronomer who lived in Aldleigh until she, seemingly, disappeared without a trace while on the cusp of a major discovery.

Thomas worships at the Bethesda chapel in the town, a community of strict Baptists who try to lead a life detached from the modern world. But it is no spoiler (it is a fact revealed early on in the novel) that Thomas is a closet homosexual, who indulges in occasional same-sex dalliances in the city. He effectively leads a double life : “in Bethesda ... the worst of sinners, and in London the strangest of saints”.

One of the reasons drawing Thomas back to Bethesda is Grace Macauley, the daughter of the community’s preacher, orphaned of her mother who died at her birth. Thomas acts as a sort of godfather to Grace, and feels responsible for ensuring that, through him, she sees enough of the outside world to enable to survive outside the rigid yet protective boundaries of her community.

Enlightenment is divided into three parts set in different years, roughly at intervals of a decade: 1997, 2008 and 2018. The passage of time shows us both Thomas and Grace growing up (or growing old), both yearning for the simpler life of Bethesda as they are unsettled by unexpected attractions – Grace is drawn to Nathan, a boy of her age from outside the Baptist community, whereas Thomas develops a crush on James Bower, the curator of the local museum, with whom he investigates the shadowy history of Maria Veduva. Throughout, the heavens act as a real and metaphorical backdrop to the story, a poetical lens through which to read the themes of the book.

Enlightenment left me in two minds, at times in awe of its brilliance, at others frustrated by its quirks. What is most mystifying is that these elements are often the two sides of the same coin.

So let me start with some things I liked about the novel. First and foremost, I loved the fact that Perry tackles religious subjects head on. “Religion” is not simply a quaint plot-driver for her. The novel is a theological one which grapples with such themes as God, faith, doubt, sin, forgiveness, suffering, redemption, love. Outside of the “Christian fiction” market I cannot think of many major contemporary novelists who make of theology a focal point of their work.

Another element I liked in the novel is that, in what is ultimately a “novel of ideas”, Perry has no qualms about including elements of genre fiction. The Maria Veduva thread provides opportunities for mystery, suspense and even a touch of the Gothic (particularly in Maria’s ghostly figure, which accompanies Thomas like a guide). My disappointment here lies in the fact that the development of this narrative sometimes seems rather half-hearted and in certain respects unconvincing.

In a novel, I like an original narrative voice. Enlightenment certainly provides one although it needs some getting used to. The novel, in fact, is written in a style with a Biblical and Victorian ring to it. I found this perplexing at the start, until I realised that this is meant to evoke the pen of Thomas Hart – his newspaper columns are interwoven into the text, and the novel itself is, possibly, the work he is shown to be working on in his final years. The problem is that the style of old-fashioned Thomas Hart, while giving the novel its unique flavour, can become heavygoing, which is an issue in what is a longish book.

To sum up, I feel conflicted about this book. One part of me considers this a great work – a haunting story with interesting characters, a major literary effort exploring big existential themes. Another part of me found some aspects of the novel rather artificial, as if one could glimpse the machinery in action behind the facade. I would still recommend it, but be warned that it is something of an acquired taste.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...

[Rebecca]

My first impression (at p. 18) was that this was like a cross between Bleak House and The Shipping News. I wasn't sure at the time if that was going to be a good or a bad thing. The ultimate answer was bad. The early, showy descriptive writing is repetitive, aiming for Dickensian rhetorical grandness but missing; the quaint small-town stuff is fine but never got me interested in these characters or their surroundings. The strangest thing about the book is that you feel it must be set in Victorian times based on everything from the diction to the piety. The references to the 1990s feel completely out of place. And while it is refreshing to see an author take religious struggles seriously, the way she tries to make them a metonym for cosmic matters (the astronomy theme) doesn't work at all. Having hated After Me Comes the Flood and not cared for Melmoth, I'm going to have to conclude that the brilliant The Essex Serpent was a one-off and I won't be reading Perry again. [I read the first 93 pages.]

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, rounded down.

I actually didn't hold out much hope for this, as the only other Perry I'd read, her modern take on Melmoth, I'd found rather dismal - and many others had seemed defeated by its faults. There's no denying that there are longueurs aplenty, and sections that are either woefully overwritten or occasionally underwritten (several times I had to backtrack to understand plot points I'd missed).

I'm also not certain the central conceit - of writing a Gothic novel set in contemporary times - ever QUITE works - things just clunkily seem anachronistic and out of place/time; protagonist Thomas Hart in particular seems like a man of 1880, NOT 1997-2017 - but that is perhaps the point. And the ghostly figures also don't 'work' for me either.

And yet - and yet ... for most of the book I was engaged and involved in figuring out the central mysteries, and even the abundance of science and faith, two subjects that I hold little interest in, did not deter me too much. But there is also no denying that of the 9 Booker contenders I have read thus far - this has the most effective AND affecting conclusion. So it goes in the middle of the pack in my Booker rankings - I don't really see it making the shortlist OR winning - but I wouldn't be particularly upset at the former. (Update - and it DIDN'T make the shortlist!)

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarah Perry’s Enlightenment is quite a reading experience for a reader such as me, one who glories in language and all it can express, as well as the creation of a character, one Thomas Hart, who appears to largely live in order to learn about this amazing universe we live in and write about it in weekly installments in the Essex Chronicle. He is not a scientist; at the outset of this novel he is a middle aged man concerned about his place in the world and his church, the possibility of finding love, the status of the teenage girl he has “adopted” unofficially as a cause, and the monitoring of everything in the heavens, especially comets. Oh, and there may be the spirit of a woman from a century ago living in Thomas’s home but only time will tell.

Life is not simple for Thomas and following his life and the history and science he traces is not always easy for the reader. But I found the payout so worthwhile. Again and again, life is affirmed in many ways. And the often gorgeous phrasing adds to the beauty of the sentiment. Some may find the sections on Hart’s thoughts on science or religion a bit heavy going but I found that they fit with the overall story of a man struggling, obsessed with working out these details of his life and the life of the mysterious Maria of 1889. They are not full of doctrine but full of thought.

This is my first experience reading Sarah Perry and it will not be my last. While I know this book might not be for everyone, I hope that readers of literary and historical fiction will give it a look, knowing that there is a definite presence of magical realism too. Highly recommended.

Rating 4 to 4.5*

Thank you to Mariner Books, NetGalley and the author for the eARC of this book.

[jaz ₍ᐢ. ̫.ᐢ₎ · Rating 1 out of 5]

(Book 9 of my Journey through the booker prize longlist )

DNF

I would like to be enlightened to know why this is on the longlist.


Jokes aside this was a chore to get through. I didn't see the point of finishing. I had no interest...
Beautiful writing, I can tell Perry can write and I want to commend that but oh my, there was so many characters, all just sitting surface level on the page, I had zero interest in the story which was surprising since I picked this up because it sounded so intriguing! For a book with so many words I felt like it was not fleshed out in the slightest. Not for me.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A complex, rich, intelligent novel that possesses all the ingredients for a smash hit for this reader: gorgeous prose, an original premise, nuanced characters, old-fashioned sensibilities that hold the most exasperating elements of modern culture at bay. And yet it just didn't gel for me. As enamored as I was of Sarah Perry's stunning sentences, I was nearly equally stultified by a belabored story.

[Claire]

Tried it in print, tried it on audio. I just cannot. A DNF for me. So long, farewell my Booker longlist completion streak.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know if there are words to describe my response to ‘Enlightenment’. I finished it weeks ago and I fear I’m as speechless about it now as I was then – how am I to do it justice in a review? Just reflecting upon it, I feel again the same kind of gulp in my throat as I felt when I reached the last chapters. A novel hasn’t done that to me since Sarah Winman’s Still Life (I only need to see the cover of that novel to feel my heart turn to mush!).

You could say that I’m as staggered by this book as the main character, amateur astronomer Thomas Hart, is staggered by the moon and stars and comets. Sarah Perry brings beauty to what’s often principally bare methodological description of scientific fact, but she manages to draw the lyrical from the technical:

‘Comet 1899 III du Lac, not truthfully named, is five months from perihelion. It is crossing the orbit of Jupiter. Obedient to Kepler’s stern and perfect laws, the semi-major axis of its orbit sweeps out equal areas in equal time, which is to say: it’s only going to get faster. It is excited. Already its hard cold carapace is thrilling to the sun, and sublimating into gas; it has acquired a little atmosphere, and particles of dust are drawn out from the comet’s faint gravitational field.’

I vividly remember encountering Perry for the first time, reading the opening pages of The Essex Serpent on a late plane from London to Belfast, and marvelling, thinking this is more poetry than prose:

‘It was not quite noon. High in the earth’s atmosphere the light refracted through ice crystals in obedience to certain laws, and described a perfect geometric circle round the sun, solid and unbroken as a city wall. ‘Do you see that?’ said Thomas, dismissing Grace, and the echo of her name in the vestibules of his heart.’

‘Enlightenment’ spoke to my feelings and into my life in many ways: stargazing is one of my own interests and I share a (surprising!) number of other qualities and life experiences with the protagonist Thomas ('his interest in the moon decreased his capacity to suffer'). I do think Sarah Perry’s words can speak for themselves, so I hope I’ll be forgiven for citing masses from the text; in my notes, I’ve highlighted great yawning paragraphs because the writing is so blazingly good.

And speaking of great yawning paragraphs, there’s something of Philip Roth in this latest novel of Perry’s, her style inclining towards protraction:

‘Let’s say the jays in Potter’s Field, now in their seventh generation, were shaken from the branches of the hazel by a thud; let’s say the rats in Lowlands Park paused briefly in their scavenging, and shrugged, and went on with vital business, as did the men in yellow jackets tending to the potholes on Station Road. Let’s say Grace Macaulay, coming out of the pound shop into white perpendicular light, heard the bloodless mechanical wail that followed the thud, and thought perhaps a train had hit the buffers, or struck a deer wandered in from Lowlands Park. But she had no time to spare on imagined disasters, and went briskly over the road to the Jackdaw and Crow where a woman watering hanging-baskets agreed with Grace that certainly it was much hotter than she would have liked, and that yes: she’d certainly heard that bang, but this was Aldleigh, and did anything ever happen here? No, said Grace, no, it never did; she walked under dripping baskets and delighted in the water, then went up an iron staircase fastened to the pub’s external wall in case of fire. As she went up the world went down, and dwindled to something inconsequential at her feet: she had no stake whatever in the thud, the potholes in the street, the customers converging on the threshold of the pound shop. She covered her ears against sirens coming now down Station Road, and was home.’

While we’re speaking of comparisons, ‘Enlightenment’ certainly has the depth and poignancy of ‘Still Life’, and Thomas’s obsessive hunt for details of the life of the Lowlands Ghost, Maria, is reminiscent of Scottie’s investigation into Carlotta Valdes in Hitchcock’s film, ‘Vertigo’. The writing is sensitive and fine, reminding me of Diane Setterfield's Once Upon a River.

Overall, the novel is observational in quality, somewhat journalistic in style; in places rapid and clippy. Perry demonstrates her unparalleled handle on timing in an early scene when Nathan smashes the town chapel window with a golf ball, introducing his character to the dual protagonists who are inside at service. The pacing is purely cinematographic.

Never slack nor overstuffed, Perry’s writing in this novel, described as ‘her finest’, demonstrates poise and agility, making ‘Enlightenment’ an effortless read. Just like in Perry’s other novels, as a reader you can feel all the humming strings that tie the characters to one other, like in Nathan’s introduction scene. Nathan’s connection to Grace Macaulay, one of our dual protagonists, governs the narrative:

‘“I’m going,” [Nathan] said, “I want to look – come on, Grace, don’t you want to see if the tide’s out? Don’t you want to hear the bell?” He held out his hand. Grace looked at it, and her own hand listed in response. Then she remembered her anger at the power he exerted over her happiness, and how unconsciously he exerted it; so she put her hands in her pockets, and shrugged, and delighted to see him flinch against this small refusal. “All right,” she said.’

In fact, the foundation of the novel comprises the way Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay relate to each other and to other individuals - principally, James Bower and Nathan, and also a Romanian vagrant whom they befriend, as well as the ‘ghost’ of a nineteenth-century astronomer, Maria (along with other minor characters who attend the Baptist chapel). Significantly, the four figures with whom Thomas and Grace’s connection to each other intersects, are mostly remote or absent. Even Grace and Thomas are estranged for part of the text:

‘Grace Macaulay – in whose veins ran Essex rivers and Bible ink; in whose philosophy the devils of hell and the saints of Bethesda did battle with her reason and her nature – sat with her phone on the bare floor of a Hackney room and thought of Thomas Hart.’

So, ‘Enlightenment’ is very much a novel about separation and solitude, and how a person reaches out into, and is reached by, the world outside their existence; how they affect and are affected by others at a remove. The poignance of this cannot help but act upon the reader. Grace and Nathan’s texts in the final part of the book are utterly shattering, and I could hardly bear to read Thomas's unrequited missives to James, they hurt my heart so much.

Thus, correspondence is the central theme of the novel, including – I suppose – communication with oneself, in the form of diaries. Even the resolution of the plot is brought about by the discovery of a letter. At times, these correspondences read like villanelles - repetitive, playing with refrains, patterning the work. Although not an epistolary novel, ‘Enlightenment’ is threaded with letters, emails, texts, and with Thomas’s second-person address confessional newspaper articles:

‘Imagine you wake from uneasy dreams to find light beaming from the soles of your feet and the palms of your hands. If you woke in a temper, I suppose the light might be red, and if you slept well, perhaps a peaceable green. Now I hear all my readers say: What strange notions you have, Thomas Hart! But bear with me: this isn’t quite as absurd as it sounds. In fact, all your life you’ve been radiating electromagnetic waves, but since you never radiate the part of the spectrum that can be seen, we can tell nothing about you just by looking.’

Characterisation of Grace and Thomas is paramount in the novel. I was obliterated by the character of Thomas Hart immediately. Within the 3% mark - before Thomas has even reached home from his office - I was fully immersed. And how delicately Sarah Perry constructs character! Not with just dialogue and inner monologue, but through reflections often miniscule, observations seemingly inert, Thomas’s or Grace’s self-introspection:

‘How abject this was! Did women really assemble themselves out of the parts they thought most likely to be wanted? Was that love’s requirement? If so, she’d have none of it.’

‘When she answered, she said either it was because her father said so, or because God did; and as she answered, it struck her that she was often unable to tell the difference.’

The only character I’m afraid is not expertly done in ‘Enlightenment’ is that of Cora Seaborne, who reappears from ‘The Essex Serpent’. She plays a not inconsiderable part in the plot; she’s more than a cameo, and I’m just not sure how I feel about the resurrection of Perry’s main character from her best-known novel here, eight years later, especially given her revival by the stunning Claire Daines in the 2022 Apple TV adaptation of ‘The Essex Serpent’. Her comeback also seems somewhat of a jarring deus ex machina; there’s something just too convenient about her reappearance. I worry that Cora is too giant a figure to be included. In the final few chapters, when our focus should be upon the resolution of the plot, introducing Cora Seaborne alongside this runs the risk of her mighty persona eclipsing (apologies for the astronomical pun!) the gentle yet heart-rending climax of all our characters’ relativities.

Interrelatedness and correspondence: these are our concerns in ‘Enlightenment’. They are majestically drawn out in the central conceit of the bonds between heavenly objects – the pull of gravity creating orbits and the interconnectedness between moons and planets and, especially, comets – parallelling the contacts and influences of Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay. The prime substance of Perry’s novel is the action of a protagonist (Thomas or Grace/the sun) upon remote bodies (James Bower, for instance/in our Solar System, the ice, gasses, dust and rocks that are comets, planets, moons and stars). Even the reader is included in Perry’s assembly of connections: we are often addressed directly within the narrative. We too are factored within the correlations:

‘The judicious reader might well think neither prosecution nor defence have brought sufficient evidence before the court, Well, then. Grace Macaulay on the charge of happiness: case dismissed.’

Seen this way, everything is interconnected. Look at the reach of the sphere of dependences in this one delicate episode (Perry has always been a fine craftswoman of the death scene):

‘Darkness came in from the periphery until the blanket was the whole of her view – and how marvellous it is, she thought, how remarkable, and it has simply been there on my lap all this time! Look how deep the blue is in the folds, look how the sun strikes it and makes the fibres burn – she lifted it to her cheek, and there’d never, not in all her life, been a sensation like it. She breathed it in, and there was a scent of lavender and laundry powder and her own body wasting in the ugly bed; then beyond this, like a field seen through a gate, the smell of the lanolin that oiled the sheep’s wool and the sweat of the farmer that sheared it – then last of all, a base not of wet iron, the blood of the ewe that nursed the lamb in the hours it could hardly stand.’

Again, mark how the sun (celestial protagonist, mirroring Thomas or Grace in our conceit) is fundamental in recording inciting incidents, complications, or dilemmas. The sun’s agency is never discounted, and at pivotal points, its action is conspicuous (even in all the quotations already referenced), as it is in the scene where Grace and Nathan’s union is severed at the moment of her baptism:

‘Then the roving sunlight struck the discs of yellow glass fixed in the windows by the pulpit, and refracting down at the ordained degree lit the surface of the water in the baptistry. Grace Macaulay, turning with unmet hope towards the closing door, entered the shining pool not with the look of falling but of something headed for the sun, and the body of the sinner was lost to unmerited light.’

What accessible language for such an elevated trope - it gives me shivers! And, as the plot moves towards its close, as Thomas ages, as characters die, and as the novel’s motion slows down, Perry’s descriptions - according to pathetic fallacy - are similarly seasoned and subdued:

‘Mutely the chapel looked back at him across a car park glossed by rain. Its door was closed, and newly painted green; beside the door a green bay tree flourished like the wicked in the thirty-seventh psalm. An east wind blowing up the Alder moved the cold illuminated air, and the bay tree danced in its small black bed. The chapel did not dance. Its bricks were pale, its proportions austere: it was a sealed container for God. No passer-by would ever take it for a place of worship, and Aldleigh’s children believed it to be a crematorium where old men were converted into ashes and smoke. No sacred carvings flanked the door, and no bells rang; its pitched slate roof shone blue when wet. Its seven tapered windows had the look of eyes half-closed against the sun, and on brighter days, light picked out a single disc of coloured glass set into each window’s apex.’

It has been a rare pleasure to review ‘Enlightenment’ for Random House UK, Vintage, via NetGalley. I found Sarah Perry’s latest novel to be tenderly truthful, in places astonishing, cumulatively heartbreaking.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sarah Perry writes beautifully, but ultimately that couldn’t t rescue this book from structural issues and a droning plot.

I actually liked the premise for the story here, but the execution doesn’t ever make it to where it needs to for the book to feel immersive and enticing.

I think I would have preferred more of the astronomy the blurb leads you to believe you’ll get in this story. It’s much more of a character study, but the characters are hard to like beyond a passing sense of inoffensiveness, and their interactions feel stilted and repetitive.

It’s almost shocking how little either the story or the characters evolve despite the narrative stretching over a fairly lengthy period of time.

I’ve certainly enjoyed plenty of books based purely on their beautiful writing, but it wasn’t enough to save this one.

*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

[Alex (TheDiscoKing) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Holy fuck can we please CONDENSE?

[Darryl Suite · Rating 3 out of 5]

Will need time to reflect.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
I loved this beautifully written and crafted book that also reunited me with Cora and William from ‘the Essex Serpent’. It’s a slow read that includes a mystery and needs to be savoured. A poster on the Booker list group, whom I disagreed with, derided the selection as ‘pure Richard and Judy- historical fiction with nothing new style wise’. On the contrary ‘enlightenment’ isn’t truly historical nor is the style predictable. I know nothing about astronomy but do remember the Hale-Bopp comet. I do know a fair amount about the Christian religion, which is an important part of the narrative, with some biblical quotes. The author grew up in a strict Baptist household so there’s some autofiction here. The characters are well developed and in the case of Grace and Nathan their adult lives are complicated by physical and emotional trauma. Thomas Hart leads a double life which brings in a LGBT theme. The ghost of Maria is used to good effect as are hers and Grace’s clothes.

I can see the links with Possession by AS Byatt, but although this isn’t as long, it might benefit from better editing as there’s some repetition. Stylistically the long paragraphs and epistolary style don’t appeal to all readers but they worked well for me. Other themes include sexuality, otherness, faith, grief, mental health, father/daughter relationships, generational friendships, physical torture/ptsd and unrequited love.

I loved all the nature references especially in the last three pages where all the threads are tied up. One line in particular ‘Blackberries in the verges are dropping sugar on the bones of the deer’ resonates at this time of year. I hope this is shortlisted and I would like to discuss it further in A group that appreciates good literary fiction. The bbc is doing an adaptation read by Nicola walker which is very good. Although Alex Jennings sounded his usual superb self in the audible preview Nicola gets the atmosphere just right. Her ability with reading women’s voices brought out the character of Lorna more, someone i had forgotten. I’ve now listened to the whole thing and it’s one of the best BAB for a while.

Today i attended a WEA zoom meeting on caroline Herschel who is rather like the fictional Maria who also discovered comets. There is an excellent LRB podcast with Sarah and Helen Macdonald talking about physics, astrology and religion amongst other topics

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have waited for Enlightenment with great anticipation, because of my great love for Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent. I have also been aware that I might be disappointed in Enlightenment, because of my great love for The Essex Serpent. Could the new one possibly meet my high expectations?

I needn’t have worried. If anything, it’s better, and I didn’t think that could happen. But Perry’s talent is a rare and astonishing thing. I am in awe.

I may or may not say more later, depending on my tolerance for my own incapacity to do justice to a work such as this. In the meantime, I need a while to catch my breath, which has been momentarily knocked out of me by this amazing and gorgeous book.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never read Sarah Perry before and rarely read literary fiction, but I decided to give Enlightenment a shot. There is a religious and philosophical aspect to the story that I didn't always understand, and sometimes it felt a bit like speculative fiction as well. However, the themes of love and friendship came through perfectly, and I loved the various elements Perry used throughout the book. There are multiple timelines, but they are in chronological order minus various media throughout which could get confusing if you aren't paying attention and listening to the audiobook.

I loved Alex Jennings as the narrator for the audio, and while I haven't listened to many audiobooks with him, I love it when I do. He is really easy to understand, so I had no issues listening at my normal 3x speed. I did notice I had to be alert and actively listening, so it might be a good idea to either read Enlightenment or at least follow along in the book if you are worried. I enjoyed the astrology pieces of the book even though I do think there would have been some way to make these elements clearer to readers like me who don't know anything about it. The ghost and paranormal bits were done in an interesting manner, and I will definitely say this author has a very unique writing style that might be too smart for me.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did Mrs Perry google Mihai Eminescu, read bits of his poems in translation and decide “that his face was better than his work”?

I’m not mad… That was hiiiiiilarious to me.

⇝ 3.5 stars

[Come Musica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Illuminazione, come quella stradale, o come quella stellare. Le comete hanno da sempre affascinato gli uomini, sin dall’antichità.
La storia ha inizio nel 1997.

“«È una Grande Cometa, e si vede a occhio nudo, ha presente? Il pubblico si appassiona molto a queste cose. Una volta la Bird’s Custard ha messo una cometa nella sua pubblicità. Forse è un brutto segno, e accadrà una qualche sciagura, e allora avremo qualcosa da mettere in prima pagina» (e a quel punto, immaginando incendi disastrosi, si illuminò subito).
«Quale cometa?»
«Ma Thomas! Non guarda mai per aria? Si chiama Hale-Bopp. Ne hanno parlato al telegiornale».”

Le comete sono caratterizzate dalla loro luminosità, sebbene essa sia anche imprevedibile. La cometa di Hale-Bopp, dal nome degli astronomi che la scoprirono, illuminò la Terra per diciotto mesi. Ma questa è anche un romanzo, fatto di amori e ossessioni, di incontri e di legami, che descrivono delle orbite intorno a noi, proprio come fanno le comete, illuminando la nostra vita:

“Cari lettori: vi sono grato di avermi fatto compagnia per tutti questi anni – di essere esistiti insieme a me su questa pagina. Ora vi devo lasciare, ma il caso vuole che mentre io me ne vado stia arrivando una cometa: la Văduva-du Lac, scoperta nel 1889 da Maria Văduva Bell di Lowlands House ad Aldleigh, in una limpida nottata dell’Essex. Se mai vi ho regalato un momento di piacere e di interesse, potete fare una cosa per me? Uscite. Guardate in alto. Vivete con me quest’atto di grazia che abbiamo in comune. Non possiamo guadagnarlo o dominarlo: è un dono, e sarà meraviglioso grazie alla vostra meraviglia. Guardate in alto insieme a me, promesso? Guardate in alto – e nel momento in cui guarderemo ci sarà quest’unica cosa meravigliosa, che risplende nel tempo, per grazia condivisa: la «cometa dentro di noi».”

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my fucking god. Shut the door. Give this book every award.

[Lou · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fortunately that is over and the longlist complete.