Sarah Perry

Broschiertes Buch

Enlightenment

Beschreibung

__LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024__

A story of love and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends

'Gorgeous... Ethereal' GUARDIAN
'A book with cosmic reach' FINANCIAL TIMES
'A romance worthy of Emily Brontë' WALL STREET JOURNAL
'A genre-bending novel of ideas' TELEGRAPH
'Sarah Perry just gets better and better' INDEPENDENT

Thomas and Grace are fellow worshippers at the 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. 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.

_A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE GUARDIAN_

Autor

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.

Zur Autorenwelt

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Jonathan Cape / Random House UK
• Artikelnr. des Verlages: 807699
• Seitenzahl: 380
• Erscheinungstermin: 2. Mai 2024
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 233mm x 152mm x 33mm
• Gewicht: 490g
• ISBN-13: 9781787335004
• ISBN-10: 1787335003
• Artikelnr.: 69063774

Rezensionen

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 Guardian

"An absorbing and affecting narrative of emotional turmoil and astronomical discovery...Ms. Perry's characters-and this circumscribed place-are so convincingly and subtly drawn that no plot twist seems outlandish and no sentiment hackneyed." - Wall Street Journal

"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)

You know that feeling - when you are fascinated by someone all the more because you don't fully understand them? That's how I feel in English author Sarah Perry's "presence." Enlightenment is a tale of two friends, different generations but hailing from the same small Essex town and even smaller congregation. There's a mystery involving a woman astronomer - but mainly there's empathy for the complexities of people's identities and belief systems, a sense of home and loads of gorgeous writing.
- Shannon Rhoades, senior editor, Weekend Edition

"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