Publishers Weekly
★ 03/25/2024
Perry’s enchanting latest (after The Essex Serpent) blends a ghost story with a meditation on astronomy and loneliness anchored on the periodic reappearances of Halley’s Comet. Thomas Hart, a columnist for the small-town Essex Chronicle in 1997 England, is fascinated by the story of Maria Văduva, a resident of the historical Lowlands House whose unexplained disappearance nearly a century before may have fueled the legend of a ghost that haunts its premises. In a parallel narrative, Perry reveals Maria to have been an amateur astronomer. Her unrequited romance with a mysterious man during the same period when she discovered a comet, which fascinates Thomas when he reads their letters, echoes thematically in the 1997 story line with Thomas’s memories of his secret love for a happily married man two years earlier, during the passing of Comet Hale-Bopp. Over the next 20 years, through the reappearance of Halley’s Comet and the return of Maria’s comet, Thomas comes to appreciate that the laws governing heavenly bodies—their recurring orbits, trajectories, and gravitational pulls—are possible templates for the eccentricities of human behavior. Perry’s affection for her characters, even in their most flawed moments, adds to the fullness of their realization, as she makes it abundantly clear that the faults and frailties that distinguish them lie not in the stars but in themselves. Perry magnificently evokes the wonder of the cosmos. (June)
From the Publisher
"Enchanting...Perry magnificently evokes the wonder of the cosmos." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Perry seamlessly blends an absorbing mystery with her principal characters’ personal conflicts to create a narrative as propulsive as it is emotionally resonant." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Stunning...Perry’s shimmering prose draws readers gradually into the story, until suddenly, we are captivated by the rich, psychologically complex, and intimate characters as they grapple philosophically with issues of faith, religion, science, astronomy, and love in all its guises. Most impressive are Perry's command of language and the extensive knowledge of astronomy and physics that she nimbly incorporates into the narrative. With brilliant storytelling, Perry’s novel of dichotomies portrays how elliptical our lives are—very much like the movement of the stars." — Booklist (starred review)
"Many of Perry’s sentences are startlingly beautiful, creating an atmospheric sense of setting and character....There’s a hint of the literary romance and mystery of A.S. Byatt’s Possession." — BookPage (starred review)
"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." — Independent (UK)
"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." — Guardian (UK)
"A rich, surprising book that dazzles and dizzies the reader...recalls...the erudition of AS Byatt, the ungovernable romances of Iris Murdoch." — Financial Times
Like A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Enlightenment is a baroque, genre-bending novel of ideas, ghosts and hidden histories. A richly layered epic....a heartfelt paean to the consolations of the sublime, where religion and science meet." — Telegraph (UK)
"No novel is ever perfect, but this one comes close. Read it, then read it again. This is a book full of unexpected wonders." — Literary Review
“A novel to relish: a work of great intelligence and charm, by a hugely talented author.” — Sarah Waters on The Essex Serpent
“A novel of almost insolent ambition—lush and fantastical, a wild Eden behind a garden gate...it’s part ghost story and part natural history lesson, part romance and part feminist parable. I found it so transporting that 48 hours after completing it, I was still resentful to be back home.” — New York Times on The Essex Serpent
“Richly enjoyable...Ms. Perry writes beautifully and sometimes agreeably sharply...The Essex Serpent is a wonderfully satisfying novel. Ford Madox Ford thought the glory of the novel was its ability to make the reader think and feel at the same time. This one does just that.” — Wall Street Journal
“The most delightful heroine since Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice…Perry creates that delicate illusion of the best historical fiction: an authentic sense of the past—its manners, ideals and speech—that feels simultaneously distant and relevant to us…By the end, The Essex Serpent identifies a mystery far greater than some creature ‘from the illuminated margins of a manuscript’: friendship.” — Washington Post
