Enlightenment

In three novels - <i>After Me Comes the Flood</i> <i>The Essex Serpent</i> and <i>Melmoth</i> - <b>Sarah Perry</b> has boldly established herself at the front rank of British novelists wielding an acute sense of place and history with a wildly irrepressible energy. Now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature Sarah Perry's landmark novel <i>The Essex Serpent</i> was awarded the Waterstones Book of the Year for 2016.|<p><b><i>Enlightenment</i> is a story of love and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends<br><br>'Hugely talented'</b><br>SARAH WATERS author of FINGERSMITH<br><br><b>'Here is a writer who understands life'</b><br>JESSIE BURTON author of THE MINIATURIST<br><br>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 commitment to religion and their desire for more. But their friendship is threatened by the arrival of romantic love.<br><br>Thomas falls for James Bower who runs the local museum. Together they develop an obsession with the vanished nineteenth-century astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor and whose identity might finally be revealed when a startling discovery is made. As Thomas fears a broken heart he comes to find solace in astronomy: might it offer as much as earthly or even divine love? Meanwhile Grace meets Nathan a fellow sixth former. They are drawn recklessly together but quickly pulled apart casting Grace into the wider world and far away from Thomas.<br><br>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 their place in it.<br><br>This ambitious novel about love and faith and science is Sarah Perry's finest work to date.</p>|<b>One of the most memorable historical novels of the past decade</b>|Sarah Perry has the rare gift of committing the uncommittable to prose - that is to say: <b>here is a writer who understands life</b>|<b>One of the great achievements of our century</b>|<b>It's so good its pages seem lit from within</b>|A <b>hugely talented</b> author