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Enlightenment

A beautiful summer read about love, mystery and unlikely friendship from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author

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Enlightenment

By: Sarah Perry
Narrated by: Alex Jennings
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Unlikely best friends Thomas and Grace are bound together by questions of faith, love and astronomy in this dazzling summer read from the #1 bestselling author.
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 religion and their desire to explore the world. But their friendship is ruptured by the arrival of love.
Over the course of twenty years, Thomas and Grace will find their lives brought back into orbit as a devastating story of passion and scientific adventure unfolds and Aldleigh’s unique mysteries are revealed.
‘It’s glorious… A beautiful, memorable novel’ OBSERVER
‘Sarah Perry just gets better and better’ INDEPENDENT
‘Absorbing… A romance worthy of Emily Brontë’ WALL STREET JOURNAL
‘Gorgeous…ethereal’ GUARDIAN
‘Sarah Perry creates worlds to disappear into… Beautiful, vivid’ BBC

©2024 Sarah Perry (P)2024 Penguin Audio

 Christian Fiction Friendship Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Romance Heartfelt Astronomy
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Critic reviews

Gauzy and unhurried, a genteel novel of inner space. It’s luxuriously – defiantly – old-fashioned... Perry has always produced gorgeous prose, and she has found a new, ethereal register in this book
A genre-bending novel of ideas, ghosts and hidden histories... A heartfelt paean to the consolations of the sublime, where religion and science meet
A rich, surprising book that dazzles and dizzies the reader. It balances reason with belief, excels in both ideas and action, and, though firmly placed in Perry’s homeland of Essex, it’s a book with cosmic reach
Extraordinary and ambitious... What Perry has done in this layered, intelligent and moving book is to construct a kind of quantum novel, one that asks us to question conventional linear narratives and recognise instead what is ever-present in Perry’s luminous vision of Essex: truth, beauty and love
Dazzling… Faith and science can inspire out-of-time cosmic wonder, but as Perry beautifully demonstrates here, so, too, can the novel
Tender, ruminative, philosophical
Sarah Perry just gets better and better… A fat, satisfying, grown-up novel – rich in plot, characters, ideas, structure, and atmosphere… It hangs together as a resplendent whole, shining like a night sky
Gorgeously written… A beautiful, compassionate and memorable book, one that will repay reading more than once
Perry has returned with another cracker. A dazzling novel, full of big ideas about religion and science, love and friendship
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
All stars
Most relevant
This is clearly an impressive novel and Perry’s best yet, a judgement based on having read them all. ‘Enlightenment’ is involving and complex, yet ideally suited to this audio-book version. Alex Jennings is excellent in steering a clear course through the novel and ensuring that listeners and carried along with an easy ability to differentiate the characters. For me the compelling character that Sarah Perry creates is Grace; an astonishing character that lives in the memory. I am two novels further on and Grace is still in my head. Yet there is more than this. Love and unrequited love, religion supportive and constraining, loneliness, and the question of whether simply being is all that we have expect in life. Sarah Perry has great skill in language and the ability to create a clear sense of space. For someone that has not really experienced the countryside and waters of Essex, this novel is certainly a magnet. In the end this is not a novel to zip through. Rewards come from considered listening and thinking over things. It will please many readers, and is well worth selecting.

Well Worthwhile and a Spur to Thought

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Sarah Perry opens up the human heart with a surgeon’s skill. Under a bright, uncompromising light, she exposes its desires and devastations, its jealousies and mercies; above all, its capacity to love. She makes us sit with discomfort. She makes us think about how free we are to make decisions, and whether meaning is ultimately derived from our relationships to others. This book is moving, though it doesn’t always move you where you most want to go—and I feel that’s what makes it so special.

Devastatingly brilliant

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I enjoyed parts of this book, but honestly it was so hard to get into and so frustrating at times. I had to keep re-listening to key sections when I became bored, frankly, and missed key details. As other reviewers have said, I kind of struggled through and persevered to the end. Got better as it progressed but ultimately largely forgettable and should probably have been a third shorter.

The struggle is real

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This is powerful rendering of a deep, subtle, complex, sometimes magical, always human and humane, story of love, pain and wonder.

An entrancing book

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l loved it all..but then I love all Sarah Perry's novels.Very atmospheric and gripping in its telling.

The atmosphere created by the reader's voice

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