Our December CC Book Club selection is Enlightenment by Sarah Perry. This novel tells the story of two friends in a small Essex town, Thomas Hart and Grace McCauley. Far apart in age, but kindred spirits in thought, Thomas and Grace both yearn to explore the world outside their insular Baptist community. They become caught up in Thomas’ research of a 19th century female astronomer, who mysteriously disappeared 100 years earlier. Along the way, they wrestle with the big questions of faith vs. science, friendship vs. love, and whether or not each person’s fate is already written in the stars.
“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…With brilliant storytelling, Perry’s novel of dichotomies portrays how elliptical our lives are—very much like the movement of the stars.” — Booklist
“A thrillingly ambitious novel of friendship, faith, and unrequited love, rich in symmetry and symbolism, Enlightenment is a shimmering wonder of a book and Sarah Perry’s finest work to date.” - BookBrowse
Enlightenment was named one of the Best Books of 2024 by NPR, Washington Post and The New Yorker, and was longlisted for the Booker Prize.
It’s December 1st! Welcome to our discussion of Enlightenment by Sarah Perry.
This was a rather peculiar story and I haven’t decided how I feel about it yet. I appreciated the fact that it was unusual — I respect a book that doesn’t follow a predictable path and has complex characters. And yet, the characters so often rubbed me the wrong way, especially Grace. I tried to, well, give her some grace, since she lost her mother and was raised by a stern, Bible-thumping father. But she had very few redeemable qualities — just seemed petulant, bad-tempered and delusional (e.g., regarding her “love” for Nathan — I would argue, that wasn’t love).
Many times the story felt like it was 1947 /1957 /1967, not 1997 / 2007/ 2017. Grace says she had searched for Nathan for 20 years and could never find out anything about him after he walked out of the church and her life. Come on — he lives nearby with a job and a family. By 2007, social media is in full swing; by 2017, it’s almost impossible to be off the grid. Along those same lines, Thomas’ hip problem was mentioned so often that I wanted to shake him and say, “Get your hip replaced, man! It’s 2017!”
Probably my biggest issue is that the rift between Thomas and Grace was nonsensical — as if Thomas had the power to determine Grace’s future with a shake of his head. The decision was all Nathan’s — he fled happily and I don’t blame him.
I do want to say that the writing was often quite lovely and thoughtful, especially Thomas’ articles in the Essex Chronicle. I enjoyed those as if I were one of his regular readers, particularly “Disordered Time” and “On the Proper Motion of the Stars.” Thomas was easily my favorite character. The anti-gay sentiment seemed like an anachronism, but I guess that’s the way it was in Bethesda — and the way it still is in current day Bethesdas.
The book was not a page-turner; it required some stick-to-it for me. How about the rest of you? Did you finish? What did you think? Below are discussion questions, if interested. Whether you love it or hate it or fall somewhere in the middle, I do think there’s a lot to discuss.
Enlightenment contains many visual elements, for example, the recurring images of the cosmos and the rich descriptions of changing weather in Adleigh. What are some of the dominant symbols in this book and how do they interact with or influence the book’s themes?
When Grace returns to Adleigh in the book’s middle section, she grapples with simultaneous fear and excitement as she prepares to see her ailing Aunt. Perry writes: “‘You can’t expect to only feel one thing at a time,’ said Thomas, ‘though certainly it would be convenient.’” Enlightenment illustrates many pairs of contradicting emotions and the kinds of life events that provoke them. Which other emotional dualities stood out to you, and how do the different characters process them?
In one of his columns, Thomas quotes a poem by W. H. Auden which reads: “If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me.” Do you agree with this quote, or would you rather be the recipient of unrequited love? What are the benefits and difficulties of being on either side of this dynamic?
Grace Macaulay has many parental figures in her life despite the loss of her mother – Ronald Macaulay, Anne Macaulay, and Thomas Hart. How do each of these characters approach childrearing differently? How do their relationships to parenthood change or not change over the course of the novel?
Perry references London frequently throughout the book – Grace and Thomas both, in different eras of their lives, spend a lot of time there. What do you think they are escaping and pursuing when they leave their tiny community and migrate to a much larger city? What type of town do you prefer?
How does Enlightenment depict class differences in Essex? Does it affect the relationships between any characters? Does it feel different or similar to the area where you grew up?
In Thomas’ last note to James, he writes: “To give love without receiving it is to understand we are made in the image of God – because the love of God is immense and indiscriminate and can never be returned to the same degree.” If God’s love can never be returned, what does it mean to attempt to make a deal with God, as Grace does during the fire?
Many of the characters’ names contain possible double meanings – Bower, for example, references a pleasant shady spot usually underneath a tree. Dimi, for another, translates to “half” in his native Romanian. What are possible interpretations of other names in this novel, and how do they relate to or contradict the personalities to which they are assigned? https://www.bookbrowse.com/reading_guides/detail/index.cfm/book_number/4833/enlightenment
I loved The Essex Serpent so I was looking forward to seeing what Perry would do this time, but while once again she seems to be playing with ideas, they didn’t cohere as well for me. And I disliked most of the characters from careless Nathan, to unbelievable Grace, to sad sack Thomas, to clueless James (page 41 “He put his name to a pink requisition slip, which concerned graves disinterred in the village of Aldwinter in 1954.”
I agree with so much of this; disliked most characters and everything was so sad! I made it through the book but didn’t enjoy it annd skimmed quite a bit. All the Christianity aspects made me wonder if I was missing some crucial appreciation, being Jewish, but perhaps not.
I didn’t particularly like any of the characters while I was reading, but after I finished the book, I felt sort of nostalgic for them, especially Thomas.
Everyone seemed to be in their own idiosyncratic orbit, only sometimes connecting with the others.
I am still struggling with this book. At 160 pages in I think I would rather have a root canal than finish it. I don’t care about any of them. I absolutely hate the format. The long paragraphs made the reading much more difficult.
The book didn’t move. It was so slow. I will give it a 1 star on Goodreads. I am traveling right and will have to find a new book. Such a disappointment.
I finished the book about three weeks ago. About 1/3 in I told my friends I didn’t recommend this book, for all the many reasons listed by others..
I felt unmoored, the characters revolved in a timelessness chamber, was it 1850, 1950, 2017. What was the author saying about religion , faith , belief systems. The astronomy Aspect seemed contrived. Just didn’t click with this one.
The death scene was written with such details, I knew the author had intimate experience -
When I was 28, I left the church that had governed almost every aspect of my life since I was born. The following Sunday, I woke to a world when I could do anything I wanted, and there’d be no scrutiny or censure over my behaviour, or clothes, or speech. Instead of going to chapel, I sat outside a café in Hackney watching ducks skimming over a pond, and there was
a physical sensation of a lifetime’s weight lifting from my shoulders. I’ve never known happiness like it before or since.
I did rather enjoy Thomas’s essays, but I wonder how many of the readers of The Essex Chronicle read them! It’s interesting (but not surprising) that she left such a strict sect of Baptists. Her acknowledgements just say, “Thank you to my parents, who raised me in the Light of God and science together.”
“Enlightenment is a novel about the presence and absence of faith. It also draws more directly on her own life in its portrayal of a Baptist community in the fictional town of Aldleigh, a version of Chelmsford, in Essex, where Perry and I grew up.”
In Perry’s case, leaving the church – as does the other main character in Enlightenment, the teenager Grace Macaulay – has not led to a rupture with her family, to whom she remains close; indeed, her father, also a keen astronomer, helped her to plot out cometary orbits when she was working on the celestial elements of the book. But there are serious theological ramifications, the most significant of which is that in turning away from God, she is providing evidence that she is not one of the chosen, and will therefore suffer an eternal penalty.
She jokes about meeting people who tell her that they, too, had an old-fashioned childhood and thinking: “Buck up matey, you’ve got no idea!” But the complications of her worldview are clearly genuine, and the impact on her visceral. She tells me that, “I woke up the other night frightened that Enlightenment dishonours God, a form of God I no longer worship. And I was moved to deep shame and fear that I have written a book that is dishonouring to God.” Is she frightened of the sin itself, or of a punishment that might follow? “Because of itself: because for so much of my life, I loved God. And there’s parts of me now in which that goes round and round like an echo that never fades.”
So all the religion stuff is integral to the book; I could not connect.
I told husband that nobody seemed to like this month’s selection very much. He asked who picked it - we all did, I told him - it got tons of awards. Then I said maybe it’s like James Joyce’s Ulysses - a highly acclaimed literary work that is very hard to read! I’m pretty sure I had to read it for Great Books in college; he never did. He only reads non-fiction, sigh.
@Marilyn, I think your husband is on the right track. I feel like Enlightenment is a very literary novel; it took Perry years to write and there is a great deal packed into it. But a lot of the content is dense. I often had to re-read sentences to grasp what she was trying to say.
The Guardian article above is helpful. I can see that this was a very personal work for Perry, with a strong autobiographical element. She herself is a mash-up of both Thomas and Grace. This quote of hers could have come directly from Thomas:
She explains that she retains “a deep love for the fabric of the buildings, for the hymns, for the scriptures, for the people, for much of the teaching. I have one toe in the sea and the remainder of my body on a more worldly shore, but I’ve never completely left. I don’t think I ever can completely leave.”
And this sounds like Grace:
“I woke up the other night frightened that Enlightenment dishonours God, a form of God I no longer worship. And I was moved to deep shame and fear that I have written a book that is dishonouring to God … for so much of my life, I loved God. And there’s parts of me now in which that goes round and round like an echo that never fades.”
Unlike Sarah Perry, Grace never seemed to have had that moment of pure happiness upon leaving the church. She feels like an outsider in both worlds:
At the bar in the Jackdaw and Crow she is Bethesda’s child, and deplores all their profanities; in her chapel pew she is a woman of the world, and deplores her sinful state (p. 274).
I’m Catholic, still practicing. The spiritual tug-o-war that Thomas and Grace feel – church teaching vs. lived experience / rigidity vs. liberalism – resonated with me. I’ve reached the point in my life where I can embrace what I love about the Church and reject what I find intolerable; however, as a result, I’m not truly a “good” Catholic. But as Perry wrote, “Doesn’t an attempt at faith constitute faith itself? It’s a dreadful thing to confuse faith with certainty.”
Thomas and Grace both castigate themselves because they have doubts, and cannot fully accept the teachings of their church. (The name Thomas certainly references Doubting Thomas of the Gospel of John.) Ironically, some would say that this is one of the strongest types of faith. Christian theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “The opposite of faith is not doubt; it’s certainty.” He believed that doubt is an essential element of authentic faith, and that the two are mutually inclusive.
In any case, the struggle is real for many who are trying to reconcile a conservative religious upbringing (in any faith) with a more modern, open-minded, open-hearted acceptance of fellow human beings in all their complexity. Enlightenment is an amplified version of that struggle.
Great explanation, and I also, remember that Paul Tillich quote.
It seems that Sarah Perry grew up in almost a conservative cult like church, almost like the Amish in America ? Honestly, I didn’t gather that from the depiction in the novel, seemed more mainstream.
I was brought up without a religion and basically subscribe to Ethical Culture’s tenets which is that you should treat others to bring out the best in them and that will also bring out the best in you. I think if there is a God worthy of belief, they will forgive me for my lack of belief if I have led an ethical life. Anyway, I had no trouble with the religion in the book. My brother became a pretty serious Episcopalian and for a while his wife wanted to be a priest. I’ve read a fair amount of both the old and new Testaments as part of my high school curriculum. (Not a religious school.) I knew some Baptists when we lived in Germany who were from Australia originally, they said their Baptist church there didn’t allow drinking, but beer was considered a necessary part of life to German baptists. (Which I thought was hilarious.) Also one of my college roommates was a comparative religion major and became a Lutheran minister. I’ve always thought religion was very interesting and probably developed because it gave groups evolutionary advantages. I think it’s one of the things I enjoy about fantasy is what sorts of religions the authors make up. It’s a great way of exploring ideas.
I had no trouble with the religion in the book in terms of practicing one’s faith in community – it’s such an uplifting support network and can be a truly enriching part of one’s spiritual life. I did have trouble with the specifics at Bethesda, as one of its tenets appeared to be that homosexuality is sinful and shameful. Interestingly, the most devout of the congregation–Grace’s father–views the information about Thomas almost with disinterest:
“But does it matter,” said Ronald, “should we cast the first stone?”–and with astonishment Thomas saw that of all the mourners present it was Ronald who understood most, and was least troubled.
It’s the horrible Lorna who presses home the point (and feeds the vengeful poison in Grace). The story mentions many times that Lorna dresses in satin – swap out that second vowel for an “a” … ?