Enlightenment

It’s glorious, doing what her books do best: intertwining a love story with reams of esoteric learning and big ideas… This is a beautiful, memorable novel * Observer, *Books to Look Out For 2024* * Enlightenment is a complete masterwork — ambitious, crafted, truly artful. With its intersections of faith, physics, love and wisdom, I imagine we will be quoting lines from the novel for years to come. It holds page after page of luminous prose, playful intelligence, storyteller’s wit and companionship, and the rarest compassion. Like the comets within, the reader travels headlong through the book’s darkness and beauty, alongside universal laws and mysteries, aligning with both human matter and spirit. Sarah Perry is an extraordinary maker, of unique mind, sensibility and gifts; her writing is, as ever, lit by sheer brilliance -- Sarah Hall, author of The Electric Michelangelo A genre-bending novel of ideas, ghosts and hidden histories... A heartfelt paean to the consolations of the sublime, where religion and science meet * Telegraph * Once again Sarah Perry has gifted us with an ambitious story impeccably imagined in poignant prose; a beautifully nuanced novel of love in all its aspects, artfully marrying faith and science into something truly beguiling -- Susan Stokes-Chapman, author of Pandora A book in which everything is kindled into light by Sarah Perry’s rapt, luminous attention: friendship, betrayal, faith, astronomy, the drizzle on the streets of Essex and the heavens above them -- Francis Spufford, author of Golden Hill A book about grace, written with a faith in awe and in elemental love, Enlightenment is full of both ordinary and extraordinary wonders. Sarah Perry has brought all her wide empathy and joy to this novel: its characters are rich and vivid and tenderly human. Enlightenment is not only a book that seems to redeem its world, but to redeem its readers. It is a gift -- Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide Attuned to the fragile intimacies between lovers and friends, and acutely aware of the devastating cruelties that are routinely meted out between strangers, Enlightenment is a mesmerizing work of wondering and wonder. Filled with quiet epiphanies into the intricacies of the human condition filtered through the lens of science and religion, this is a profound and moving novel that invites the reader to regard the world around them with a more compassionate gaze -- Mary Jean Chan, author of Flèche Gorgeous, galvanic, omniscient, intimate and eminently giving, Enlightenment is a novel to live with and learn by. As I read it, I felt housed by it. And, damn, did the house have skylights. Sarah Perry is a national treasure, and this is her best book yet -- Caoilinn Hughes, author of Orchid and the Wasp 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 Perry seamlessly blends an absorbing mystery with her principal characters’ personal conflicts to create a narrative as propulsive as it is emotionally resonant. Swiftly sketched but fully realized secondary characters give the novel a social texture more commonly found in Victorian literature, an impression bolstered by Perry’s intricately layered prose. Much of the story is sad, but a radiant finale suggests reconciliation and renewal. Thoughtful, sensitive and beautifully written * Kirkus, *Starred Review* *