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Enlightenment is a book by an author at the top of their game. And when that author is Sarah Perry, whose previous works include the bestselling The Essex Serpent and Melmoth, that’s high praise indeed. This is a fat, satisfying, grown-up novel – rich in plot, characters, ideas, structure, and atmosphere. Most writers only really deliver on a few of those; in this book about astronomy, faith, and devotional love in all its forms, Perry leaves none behind.
It’s 1997 in Aldleigh, an invented town in Perry’s beloved Essex. Thomas Hart, a 50-year-old journalist, leads a double life: his “soul” lives in the Strict Baptist church in Aldleigh, while his “nature” jaunts to London to hook up with men. Keeping him at church is fellow congregation member Grace Macaulay – whom he has helped raise since her mother died in childbirth, and who has now grown into a wilful but distinctly unworldly 17-year-old.
Then both fall in love: Grace with a local teenager, Nathan; Thomas with James, from the town’s museum – thrust into Thomas’s orbit when they investigate the story of Maria Văduva, a forgotten astronomer who disappeared from a nearby manor in the 1880s.
As the Hale–Bopp comet traverses the skies, the men become obsessed with unravelling the mystery of Maria – a puzzle that winds satisfyingly though the book (and contains a connection to The Essex Serpent I won’t spoil).
Thomas finds himself not only falling for James, but also increasingly passionate about studying the skies himself. Perry writes about the wonder Thomas finds in both the explanations and enduring mysteries of science, and how much that can feel like wonder at God, in a way that is uplifting and profound. Like her creations, she was raised in the Strict Baptist church, having doubts about its doctrine while holding onto a personal faith. You sense she writes her own marvelling at the cosmos here.
As the book jumps ahead into 2008 and 2017, it becomes clear that Enlightenment is structured like the orbits of celestial bodies it spends much time discussing. Characters are divided, pulled in one direction and another by competing forces and attractions. “Things pass, and they return”: lost friends and lovers are drawn back into each other’s paths; faith burns down only to flare again.
Perry feeds the scientific principles and ideas discussed within the book into both its narrative structure and emotive, effective metaphors – a clever trick, but not a cold one. Rather, this form-and-content dance lights up the book in the reader’s mind, and helps to illuminate her characters.
That said, I wasn’t entirely convinced that the near obsessive “unreturned” love Grace and Thomas cling to for 20 years, seemingly at the exclusion of any other relationships, was quite as noble as Perry suggests – but it does make for an intensely romantic read.
Enlightenment is powered by the huge coincidences and cruel twists of fate used by your classic 19th century novelists, and as she turns the knife, you realise how invested you are in her cast of oddballs.
Thomas is also a writer; this could be his book. We’re told his style has “the cadence of the King James Bible” – a comment Perry has used to explain her own plushly rhythmic, somewhat old-fashioned style. Her writing is always thick with atmosphere, and Gothic shudders of doomy portent; Enlightenment features fires, ghosts, and blue moons.
The prose reads gloriously, though the many repetitions of certain descriptors come to weigh the storytelling down – lampshades looking like moons is a useful detail once, but becomes distracting when you keep on meeting it. But this is to point out one wrong stitch in a sumptuous tapestry: Enlightenment hangs together as a resplendent whole, shining like a night sky.
Published by Jonathan Cape on 2 May, £20
