Like many booklovers, I've read Sarah Perry's blockbuster novel, 'The Essex Serpent', so I had a good idea of what to expect from her new book, 'Enlightenment'. It doesn't disappoint.

The story (without chapter breaks) is split into three parts, each taking place about a decade apart, starting in 1997. The reason for the spacing becomes evident as we learn about astronomy, and comets in particular - some of which appear during these documented years.

The novel follows a writer and journalist, Thomas Hart, who lives on his own in the fictional Essex town of Aldleigh. At times, it feels as though Perry is channelling her own thoughts about writing through him. Thomas is gay, meets and falls in love with a married man, and - for reasons never fully explained - feels responsible for the novel's other protagonist, Grace Macaulay, whom he first met when she was a baby and he 20 years old. The two of them belong to the same strict and strange Methodist sect, and religion both binds them together and causes their rupture.

Added to all this is the pursuit of a mystery, with Thomas researching a female astronomer called Maria Vaduva Bell, who lived in Aldleigh in the 1880s. She corresponds with a female friend in London, known only by her initials, 'CS'. I won't spoil the surprise, but it soon becomes clear who that person is.

Perry writes well and draws you into the story, explaining astronomy and tying all the threads together very neatly. It's a great read, and enlightening, too.

Haunting, gritty, elegant. Sarah Perry is an immersive writer who weaves a narrative across 3 era's to create a truly mindbending novel and I mean that in the best way

At times I did have to take a breather, purely because the lives of the characters were so well illustrated. Full disclosure, I am not a Christian, but have ful respect for all religions and faiths and I am always fascinated to learn about different faiths in literature. I especially enjoy books which describe the experience of faith and not preach the faith itself

Enlightenment is exactly this and the key message I took from it is the dichotomy of Science and faith through the stories of two friends, Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay, who have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Teh community is small, baptist and close-knit.

Over a series of events, Grace and Thomas find their paths crossing over and over, not least because of Thomas's obsession with an astronomer who disappeared in the 19th century and Graces pursuit of a higher understanding of life

Not only is this a great read, it is also a book to return to, to explore the themes further as well as the analogous nature of the narrative

Thank you very much to Netgalley, Random House Uk, Vintage and the incredible author Sarah Perry for this stunning ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

A lovely premise yet hard to follow at times. The descriptions of circumstances can be overly vague.

Enlightenment is a fascinating immersion into the lives of the two central characters and the small circle around them (whether knowingly or through discovery of 19th century artefacts). It’s easier to admire rather than to love, perhaps, with a dense appreciation of astronomy, religion and - ultimately- our place in the universe.

Set in three main time periods from 1997 onwards (historical fiction‽), whilst also deeply indebted to the late 1880s in both the dialogue with the astronomer Maria through the centuries and also perhaps in style - this feels like an old gothic novel that just happens to be set in the recent past. Thomas Hart and Grace Macauley are both peculiarly out of time - and their most explicit interaction with the modern world is largely ‘off the page’ and Essex for them feels like it’s running at a different pace.

I’m left reflecting on our place in the stars, the importance of friendship and not leaving things unsaid, the cruelty of religion in the face of difference (especially LGBT) and the hurt of unrequited love. Enlightenment could perhaps be a little tighter, but its sprawling nature is part of its charm.

Elliptical, strange and alluring 4.5 rating, raised

Perry’s writing is rich and textured, and even though this one in set ‘in modern times’ – three timescales, across 20 years, 1997, 2008 and 2017, her language, sentence construction and characters all seem to belong to a time 100 years earlier. And there are many reasons for this. One of the themes here is time itself, and our perception of it. IS time linear, or do ‘times’ coincide and happen together – memory itself plays our past as we experience our present.

The central character in this is a local Essex journalist, Thomas Hart, a courtly, rather old fashioned man, one who could have stepped straight out of a Victorian novel. His writings about the subject matters which interest him – astronomy and the recurrence of comets in particular, whose movement is elliptical – are of a somewhat old fashioned depth and complexity. Hart has been raised in a rather old fashioned Baptist community. Perry herself had a similar background. The community eschew modern culture, particularly television, so the prime cultural influence IS Biblical, and the rich language and imagery from that tradition.

Taking us further into the past is a mystery around a vanished Romanian woman from the 1880’s Maria Veduva, some of whose papers Hart discovers, and spends his life investigating. Veduva herself features as perhaps a kind of ghost, stalking the imagination of several of the central characters. Readers of The Essex Serpent may find a frisson towards the end as the central character of THAT book makes an appearance in this.

Hart, some 16 or 17 years before this story begins, falls in love in an instant with Grace Macaulay. Grace is a tiny baby, daughter of the Baptist chapel’s preacher. Her mother has died. Grace, a teenager when we first meet her, is a peculiar and eccentric girl, old fashioned and direct. The love between Thomas and Grace is in no way sexual. Another major theme is love itself, and its extraordinary guises, how love is found, lost, found and lost, over and again. Including love of, for and from, the Divine.

I didn’t always rationally understand everything within these pages, but this seemed, also, to be of a piece with its astronomical themes – sometimes cloud covers the face of the moon, and indeed the stars, at other times the clouds part, and the heaven’s stars can be clearly seen, before those moments of enlightenment are veiled again

Thomas Hardy writes a regular column in the local paper, in a somewhat old-fashioned style, worships at the Strict Baptist Bethesda Chapel, lives a quiet life in Aldleigh in Essex, and has another life as a gay man in London. His ties to Aldleigh include his relationships with the MacAulay family, Grace is just a baby when he first meets her and he's a bit like a godfather to her. Thomas develops an interest in astronomy, and in the story of Maria Vaduva, who lived in the big house near the Chapel in the late 19th Century and discovered a comet, but who has vanished from history.

Bits of the book are tragic, the deaths of Anne MacAulay and Dimi the Romanian priest, Thomas's devastation over James, the awful scene at the funeral. But there's also hope when some relationships are mended, towards the end of the book, and answers are found to some mysteries (I also enjoyed the Cora reference for readers of The Essex Serpent). There's a lot to think about in terms of what faith is, what it means to believe and yet not belong. Given Sarah Perry's own background, there's a lot of affection for the Strict Baptists, and a meditation on faith in a way that I feel few other novelists would manage.

It's a relatively slow book in many ways, but it was absorbing. It's beautifully written but I'm not sure it will be for everyone - in many ways i'm not sure what I made of it at all!

It’s difficult to give a description of this novel. Ostensibly, it’s a story about faith and science, but also part-mystery. Thomas Hart writes for the local paper, goes to church and lives a relatively simple life - except for when he goes to London to ‘be a sinner’. He has a connection with young Grace Macauley, entrenched in her life of religion and obedience, but longing for more.
I found this novel very frustrating. It is so beautifully written; indeed, no-one could deny the sheer artistry of Perry’s writing, yet, for me, it was lacking. It was written exactly as Perry wanted it to be written, but for me I needed more. The story was slow, and I found parts of it incredibly pretentious. A beautifully written novel, but ultimately a bit of a slog.

An atmospheric page turner.

I absolutely loved this book. Not my usual read but it was a beautiful step out of my comfort zone.

I was very happy to get an arc copy of this book, as I really enjoyed The Essex Serpent. However, I found Enlightenment a disappointing read much as I wanted to enjoy it. It was somewhat disjointed, jumping from time frame to time frame and the pacing was uneven with long stretches where not much happened followed by a short burst of activity.
I must also confess I wasn't much taken with any of the characters. I wanted to tell Thomas Hart to pull himself together and Grace not to be so weird.
On the plus side the descriptions are excellent and I love the setting and the way it brings in elements of Essex life like the great flood which made it necessary to move the tombstones. The character (or ghost) of Maria Veduva is intriguing, almost gothic, and I loved the way she had a view on everything and her dress with the comets sewn in seed pearls!
Overall I didn't bond with this book as much as I hoped I would. I am sure some people will love it, but I found it a challenging read.
With thanks to Netgalley and Vintage Books for an early copy in return for an honest review.

I have always enjoyed Sarah Perry books - they are complex but addictive and this one did not disappoint. The story takes on a ghostly eeriness and explores the relationship between science, religion, expectation and desire. At its heart it is a love story and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.

I liked the idea of this book. Love & Astronomy just sounded like a blend I could enjoy.

I was hoping to be gripped by the first page as that usually is a sign that I would enjoy the book.’

Unfortunately, I couldn’t connect to the story or the characters. I’m not sure if it was the writing style or the book itself but it wasn’t my cup of tea. However, I believe in second chances so I will give this author a second chance and the book a second chance in the future as maybe it was the wrong time

This is an extraordinary book. It was disconcerting at first to discover that Sarah Perry was writing about contemporary life but in the cadence and rhythm of a nineteenth century preacher! However, once I got used to the writing style, the story pulled me onwards to learn about love and friendship and comets; religion and forgiveness and ghosts. This novel will stay with me for a long time.

A truly atmospheric page turner! Set in Essex through differing centuries, this is a story of love, loss, astronomy and religion. Quite a lot so successfully fit into one novel? Not with Sarah Perry wielding her pen - the big themes are dealt with with the seriousness they deserve, and the characters, settings and plot are exemplary. There was just a little confusion at the start, while the complicated timelines, characters and story were being set, but thereafter everything was clear, the writing style poetic and lyrical, and the characters and setting visible in the mind of the reader. This is a beautiful, nuanced and atmospheric book which immersed this reader in another world.

Thomas and Grace are close friends, despite a thirty-year age gap. Both are challenged by science versus religion and by falling in love- Thomas with the married museum head, James, and Grace with sixth former Nathan. Thomas finds comfort in astronomy, and eventually he and Grace are drawn back together. I found this a difficult read, it comes across as very literary but a bit over-written. The tone is Gothic even though the setting is contemporary, so I found it difficult to connect and identify with the characters. A shame, as I loved The Essex Serpent, but this didn’t hang together for me.

I really wanted to love this one, but the story just didnt come together for me. Sarah Perry's writing is sublime as always, but I found everything else was lacking: the pacing was both too slow and too fast at times (skipping over decades), the plot itself felt a little threadbare, and the character work didnt always make sense to me. I loved the themes and the writing, but as a story this sadly didnt work for me.

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/2024/01/enlightenment-by-sarah-perry.html

Sarah Perry has written another enticing, atmospheric novel straddling the divide between science and faith. Drawing on her own experience she introduces the tightly-constrained world of Bathesda Chapel where we meet Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay, a middle-aged newspaper columnist and a young girl just starting to strain against the rules of her religion. Romantic love slowly begins to unravel their friendship as Thomas falls for James, a married museum curator and Grace's world is overturned by Nathan who brings the outside secular world bursting in on her. Maria, an unknown nineteenth century astronomer brings them all together and helps to tear them apart as double lives in the chapel and outside are exposed.

It's a wonderful novel, and while not entirely historical (the modern episodes are set from the 1990s to the present day) it is full of Perry's trademark gothic atmosphere and late Victorian sensibility. Thomas is touching man out of his time, old-fashioned turns of phrase, his newspaper columns in the voice of the nineteenth century. A wonderful exploration of different types of love and of faith and the collision of worlds. Thomas and Grace are eccentric, human creations whose struggles and contradictions are vivid and moving as they navigate the complexities of imperfect and unrequited love and try to reconcile their faith with their desires.

I very much enjoy Perry's writing, which has a sort of gentle intensity and precision.

This book made me think a lot about genre. (Partly because Perry was annoyed to be called a hist fic writer, which I admit made me laugh, because all of this book is set in the past and most of it thirty years or a hundred and thirty years ago. I think 1997 sadly counts as hist fic these days, however upsetting that might be. However I recognise very clearly that the oversimplification of genres can be upsetting, and that often we don't like to be put in a box that we don't feel fits us.)

Anyway of course her genre is lit fic for sure, as the words and their order are as important as the plot. This book is concerned with God and the universe, both of which feel like classic Perry. Science and theology, love and time.

I felt that for me it didn't completely come together, which is why it doesn't get five stars, although I enjoyed it a great deal. I think the way she contrives coincidence and also the randomness of existence is very convincing in this. There is a faint presentiment of disaster, and you may guess what the disasters might be, they are lit fic sort of disasters.

I know this took a long time to write for various reasons and one of the odd things about writing, and books, is how the time taken to write is not reflected in the time taken to read, and indeed the time spent in the writing of a novel is generally invisible to the reader.

There are some beautiful descriptions in here, both of places/scenery and of the characters' emotions. One of the themes of literary fiction I think is the enormity of the gaps between people, and the impossibility of traversing those spaces, even (perhaps especially) when you love someone. And how easy it is to do the wrong thing when trying to do right. Grace and Thomas spend a lot of time thinking about 'goodness' and what that might entail, and whether you need to be guided to be good, and if you do, who might do that best. (God? Or His representatives? But how do you tell?) Both of them are pulled in two directions, between their faith and 'the world'. I have no faith myself but I can see how this might happen, and this book approaches faith (the very particular version of Christianity held by the Strict Baptists) in a way that feels almost recognisable. Thomas's growing fascination with astronomy and the linked mystery of Maria's life is very nicely done and Perry uses his newspaper column to communicate complex theories in a straightforward way.

Enlightenment is a novel about science and faith, as two unlikely friends push at the edges of belief and love. Thomas Hart and Grace Macauley both worship at Bethesda in the Essex town of Aldleigh, long time friends despite being very different ages. When Thomas meets James Bower, and they are drawn into the mystery of nineteenth century astronomer Maria Veduva, he falls in love, but as they are frustrated in their searches for Maria's history, Thomas realises that James doesn't love him in the same way. And Grace meets Nathan, a teenager with no connection to Bethesda, and is caught between different kinds of love and faith, until one moment throws all of them apart.

This is a hard book to describe, with the feeling of a historical novel at times despite being set in the 90s onwards, and with the narrative intercut with Thomas' articles for the local paper. It is about different kinds of beliefs, from religious to astronomy to love, and Perry mingles all of these ideas together in a way that transcends any of them, really. The book focuses in on very human moments and emotions, such as love that wasn't meant to be, and the seemingly small things people do that have huge consequences, and you really feel this from the way it moves perspective, the narrative voice flying through Aldleigh at times to show you what is going on.

Both Thomas' and Grace's stories are moving, particularly Thomas' slow realisations of how things might seem or impact other people differently, and in the importance of just knowing people. The depiction of a gay man who had grown up in a faith that made him feel ashamed of that is gripping and sad, but also he does find purpose and peace, not the least within astronomy and science. Grace's narrative is perhaps a more traditional 'grown up within a particular church and then leave it' one, but again, with a lot of wistful longing for what might've been.

Enlightenment isn't necessarily the sort of book I'd immediately pick out, but I was interested by Thomas' story from the blurb, and actually the book was complex and bittersweet.

I'm not sure I will be able to do justice to this wonderful book. A synopsis of the plot can't convey the beauty of the language or subtleties of the ideas.

But in brief - the novel revolves around two main characters, Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay, linked by the strict Baptist chapel in Essex they attend, Bethseda. Thomas is about to leave the chapel when he sees the infant Grace, whose mother has died, and he feels a bond that means he must stay to be close and care for her. He writes pieces for a local paper, and becomes initially interested, and then obsessed with the story of Maria Vaduva Bell, and her interest in astronomy.

The novel begins in the mid 1990s and ends in the present day, but apart from the occasional mention of mobile phones or shops the narrative is firmly in the 1880s - in both tone and in the characters. It opens with what must surely be a reference to Bleak House - 'Monday: Late winter, bad weather.' And neither Thomas nor Grace belong to their worlds, another bond between them.

It is a celebration of the Essex landscape; an exploration of faith and love, particularly unrequited love, and the passing of time. There is a particularly satisfying link for fans of the Essex Serpent towards the end of the novel. And it certainly spurred me into wanting to know more about the night sky and comets in particular.

A long read and highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a review copy.