Enlightenment

Author Sarah Perry
Narrator Alex Jennings
Publisher Random House
Publish Date 2 May 2024
Run Time 13 hours and 5 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Environmental issues, Narrative theme: Interior life, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Popular astronomy and space.

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What to expect

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

Critics Review

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

A genre-bending novel of ideas, ghosts and hidden histories... A heartfelt paean to the consolations of the sublime, where religion and science meet

Telegraph

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

Financial Times

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

Observer

Dazzling... Faith and science can inspire out-of-time cosmic wonder, but as Perry beautifully demonstrates here, so, too, can the novel

Daily Mail

Tender, ruminative, philosophical

Times Literary Supplement

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

Independent

Gorgeously written... A beautiful, compassionate and memorable book, one that will repay reading more than once

New Scientist

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

Observer, *Books to Look Out For 2024*

User Reviews

Book 2.0

Narration 4.5

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5.0

Tdk 29/04/2025

1.0

4.0

Plot free meanderings in the Essex mud. If you suspect a book called Enlightenment is going to be pretentious, you'd be right.

ollietheoctopus 24/08/2024

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