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Enlightenment

A Novel

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Telegraph, Washington Post, The New Yorker. LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE.

"Like A.S. Byatt's Possession, Enlightenment is a baroque, genre-bending novel of ideas, ghosts and hidden histories. A richly layered epic....a heartfelt paean to the consolations of the sublime, where religion and science meet."" — Telegraph

""Read it, then read it again. This is a book full of unexpected wonders."" — Literary Review

From the author of The Essex Serpent, a dazzling novel 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.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 25, 2024
      Perry’s enchanting latest (after The Essex Serpent) blends a ghost story with a meditation on astronomy and loneliness anchored on the periodic reappearances of Halley’s Comet. Thomas Hart, a columnist for the small-town Essex Chronicle in 1997 England, is fascinated by the story of Maria Văduva, a resident of the historical Lowlands House whose unexplained disappearance nearly a century before may have fueled the legend of a ghost that haunts its premises. In a parallel narrative, Perry reveals Maria to have been an amateur astronomer. Her unrequited romance with a mysterious man during the same period when she discovered a comet, which fascinates Thomas when he reads their letters, echoes thematically in the 1997 story line with Thomas’s memories of his secret love for a happily married man two years earlier, during the passing of Comet Hale-Bopp. Over the next 20 years, through the reappearance of Halley’s Comet and the return of Maria’s comet, Thomas comes to appreciate that the laws governing heavenly bodies—their recurring orbits, trajectories, and gravitational pulls—are possible templates for the eccentricities of human behavior. Perry’s affection for her characters, even in their most flawed moments, adds to the fullness of their realization, as she makes it abundantly clear that the faults and frailties that distinguish them lie not in the stars but in themselves. Perry magnificently evokes the wonder of the cosmos.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Alex Jennings provides a sensitive narration of Perry's multilayered novel, a meditation on loneliness and the fragility of human connections, as seen through the motif of a comet's recurring orbits. With a thoughtful air, Jennings tells the interconnected stories of columnist Thomas Hart, a closeted gay man who lives in the village of Aldleigh; Maria Vaduva, a nineteenth-century astronomer who is rumored to haunt a local manor; and Thomas's godchild, Grace Macaulay, a prickly girl who seeks intimacy with a classmate. Perry's intricate prose and Jennings's measured, somewhat formal tone work in tandem, blurring the boundaries between the past and the present and underlining the cyclical nature of human interactions. While the densely packed narrative requires careful listening, patient listeners will find much to ponder. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      December 6, 2024

      In 1990s rural England, Thomas Hart and his godchild Grace Macaulay's friendship and romances tumble into painful territory, linked by Thomas's obsession with 19th-century astronomer Maria Vaduva. Whether Maria truly haunts him or he's merely obsessed is up to listeners to decide. What's certain is that his life's choices plague him for years. But even when Thomas is at his most isolated, Maria's ghost is there to spur him on. Perry's (The Essex Serpent) lyrical writing combines with Alex Jennings's narration to unmoor the story in time. It's often jarring when a character checks a cell phone because the story feels as if it should occur during Maria's time instead of Thomas and Grace's. Rather than harm the story, this muddled feeling of time anchors listeners to Thomas's inner core. He's a man likely to feel uncomfortable in any time, focused on people who aren't as modern as they could be. Jennings's voice grants him an extra dose of sympathy to temper his loneliness. While he will never know, listeners will be happy by his side, wishing happy endings for him and Grace. VERDICT This richly atmospheric novel exploring celestial mysteries, fate, and human frailty is not to be missed.--Matthew Galloway

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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