Enlightenment: from the author of The Essex Serpent

(Hardback)

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An unforgettable story of love, faith and science, Enlightenment is Sarah Perry's finest novel to date An unforgettable story of love, faith and science, Enlightenment is Sarah Perry's finest novel to date Thomas Hart and Grace Macauley are fellow worshippers at the Bethesda Baptist chapel 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 for more. But their friendship is threatened by the arrival of love. Thomas falls for James Bower, who runs the local museum. Together they develop an obsession with the vanished nineteenth-century female astronomer Maria Veduva, said to haunt a nearby manor, and whose startling astronomical discoveries may never have been acknowledged. Inspired by Maria, and the dawning realisation James may not reciprocate his feelings, Thomas finds solace studying the night skies. Could astronomy offer as much wonder as divine or earthly love Meanwhile Grace meets Nathan, a fellow sixth former who represents a different, wilder kind of life. They are drawn passionately together, but quickly pulled apart, casting Grace into the wider world and far away from Thomas. In time, the mysteries of Aldleigh are revealed, bringing Thomas and Grace back to each other and to a richer understanding of love, of the nature of the world, and the sheer miracle of being alive.

Reviews

The Essex Serpent is one of the most memorable historical novels of the past decade -- Sunday Times
Melmoth is one of the great achievements of our century * Observer *
The Essex Serpent is a novel to relish: a work of great intelligence and charm, by a hugely talented author -- Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith
I loved this book. At once numinous, intimate and wise, The Essex Serpent... It contains some of the most beautiful evocations of place and landscape I've ever read. It is so good its pages seem lit from within. As soon as I'd finished it I started reading it again -- Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk
Sarah Perry has the rare gift of committing the uncommittable to prose - that is to say: here is a writer who understands life -- Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist
Had Charles Dickens and Bram Stoker come together to write the great Victorian novel, I wonder if it would have surpassed The Essex Serpent No way of knowing, but with only her second outing, Sarah Perry establishes herself as one of the finest fiction writers working in Britain today -- John Burnside, author of Black Cat Bone

Author Bio

Sarah Perry is the internationally best-selling author of the novels Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstone's Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award and has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has a PhD in Creative Writing.