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A review by illustrated_librarian
Enlightenment by Sarah Perry
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Seperated in age by three decades, they're nonetheless kindred spirits - torn between their Baptist community and a desire for the wider world. The arrival of love in both their lives will send them spinning apart, but the mystery of a vanished 19th century astronomer, coincidences, and design, will bring them back into eachother's orbits.
This novel captures such quiet wonder: wonder at the things that shape our lives in all their unlikeliness and inevitability, wonder at being here at all, on this big rock spinning through the vast and ineffable cosmos.
It's a story of science, faith, friendship, love, ghosts, time, and the stars, wrapped up in Victorian black silk and embroidered with seed pearls. It's the story of lives that proceed moment by moment and all at once - time alternatively collapsing into a singularity and stretching away to infinity; it dwells on choices that can't be taken back, on their huge impact but also their vanishing smallness. Perry asks us to marvel at the wonders of the cosmos and the depths of the human heart, and evokes the sublime in both.
The narrative proceeds as an elliptical orbit: faster at either end, the middle section slower but no less necessary. The writing is delightfully Victorian, both warm and melancholy, with each character or setting or moment positively glowing under Perry's attentive gaze. There's a timeless quality to it all that feels so wise, like a forgotten classic.
I just love these beautiful, thoughtful novels Sarah Perry writes in her stylish prose questioning science and faith and kinds of love and mercy. Here is a story gentle in its telling but ambitions in its themes, presented with a clarity of insight that nonetheless doesn't presume to answer to the huge questions poses - I fear it's cleverer than I may ever understand though that doesn't diminish my delight. It won't be for everyone, but it certainly was for me.
This novel captures such quiet wonder: wonder at the things that shape our lives in all their unlikeliness and inevitability, wonder at being here at all, on this big rock spinning through the vast and ineffable cosmos.
It's a story of science, faith, friendship, love, ghosts, time, and the stars, wrapped up in Victorian black silk and embroidered with seed pearls. It's the story of lives that proceed moment by moment and all at once - time alternatively collapsing into a singularity and stretching away to infinity; it dwells on choices that can't be taken back, on their huge impact but also their vanishing smallness. Perry asks us to marvel at the wonders of the cosmos and the depths of the human heart, and evokes the sublime in both.
The narrative proceeds as an elliptical orbit: faster at either end, the middle section slower but no less necessary. The writing is delightfully Victorian, both warm and melancholy, with each character or setting or moment positively glowing under Perry's attentive gaze. There's a timeless quality to it all that feels so wise, like a forgotten classic.
I just love these beautiful, thoughtful novels Sarah Perry writes in her stylish prose questioning science and faith and kinds of love and mercy. Here is a story gentle in its telling but ambitions in its themes, presented with a clarity of insight that nonetheless doesn't presume to answer to the huge questions poses - I fear it's cleverer than I may ever understand though that doesn't diminish my delight. It won't be for everyone, but it certainly was for me.