Yes, I agree, but she had no right to expect him to open up on her timetable.
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I agree with @mathmom â no matter the reason, Grace had no right to be SO mad for SO long about any of it. She is not a compassionate or understanding person. I think she has a bit of a persecution complex, and I couldnât see that she had any real friends (other than Thomas, whom she cast aside) over the twenty year span of the book.
I just canât warm up to her, hard as Iâve tried. Kudos to Thomas for being her only protector and friend â too bad she didnât appreciate him.
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I felt his lie about Nathan ruined her life
I still maintain that the only likeable character (or at least the only not-sad character) is the editor (owner?) of the newspaper who is so patient and encouraging to Thomas. I donât feel like going back into the book to find his name but AI suggests he doesnât have a name in the book?
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yes, @Marilyn that editor sensed Thomas needed something to focus on, and changed his life by suggesting he write about astronomy.
Thmoas showed real compassion towards, the homeless man, true Christian spirit of taking care of âthe least of us â.
speaking of Ai, 
I asked what does Sarah Perryâs entitlement title mean
Here is result
The title
Enlightenment refers to the novelâs central themes of gaining knowledge and understanding through a reconciliation of faith, science, and love. It explores the charactersâ journeys as they grapple with their religious upbringing versus their desire for a broader understanding of the world and the cosmos. The title also alludes to a period of intellectual and philosophical awakening in human history.
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Reconciling faith and science: The novel examines how faith and science can coexist and how a personâs view of the universe can be shaped by both. For one of the main characters, his loss of strict religious faith leads to a new sense of wonder and âenlightenmentâ through astronomy.
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Personal journeys of understanding: The title represents the charactersâ individual quests to find meaning and identity. It symbolizes their process of deconstructing their beliefs to understand love, friendship, and their place in the world.
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Challenging traditional ideas: The title can be interpreted as a challenge to a single, traditional idea of enlightenment, suggesting that there are multiple paths to knowledge and understanding, including science, religion, and human connection.
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A connection to the past: The novelâs narrative style and its themes of fate and coincidence evoke a connection to 19th-century literature, a period in which the concept of âenlightenmentâ was also a significant philosophical and intellectual pursuit.
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Yes, I liked him very much. He had a sense of humor, which seemed to be sorely lacking in most of the other characters. His name is Nick Carleton.
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So true! That was really saintly on his part. Thomas puts Matthew 25:35-40 into practice.
Thomas had taken the stranger home, and finding him biddable and childlike had put him in the bath, and washed him without difficulty or embarrassment. Heâd wiped filth from his back and buttocks, and from his starved armpits; heâd discovered old wounds ulcerating on ankles damaged by bad boots, and doused those in boiled water in which he dissolved a teaspoon of Maldon salt; heâd clipped the hair back to the sunburned scalp, and found things living in the clippings, and put them in the kitchen bin. All this had caused the man to weep into the bathwater.
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Yes, but in the end, I donât think thatâs Thomasâ fault. At what point does the responsibility shift to Grace? She lets it ruin her life. She never addresses Nathanâs culpability in the matter. She just spends a lifetime brooding.
It was a book of broodersâŠ.. Thomas , Maria, and Grace âŠ.unrequited love, longing.
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One of those moments of serendipity is Grace finding Dimi Dines sleeping in the woods, and Thomas taking him under his wing. What are the odds that the homeless man you bring home can translate the Romanian diary youâve been trying to crack?
(Today, Romanians are the second most common non-British nationality in the UK, but that wasnât the case back when Dimi appeared in 1997.)
Dimi was an interesting character with (another) sad backstory, but like the girl who set the fire, he appears out of nowhere and then is conveniently (and tragically) removed when no longer needed.
He solves the mystery of Mariaâs lover âMâ, identifying him as Mihai Eminescu. This is a real person, Romaniaâs national poet: Mihai Eminescu - Wikipedia
In reading about Mihai Eminescu, I learned that:
Eminescu used celestial bodies as powerful metaphors in many of his works, most notably in his masterpiece,âLuceafÄrulâ (variously translated as âThe Morning Starâ, âThe Evening Starâ, âThe Vesperâ, or âLuciferâ).
While âLuceafÄrulâ is primarily about a star (Hyperion) and a human girl, the starâs descent to the ocean is explicitly described using comet imagery in several translations.
Enlightenment is a clever book, no doubt about it â I just wish it were a more captivating story.
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I felt she was trying to hard, not just with plots and metaphors and character names, but the artificial way she often began chapters or sections. I particularly got irritated, by the series of descriptions of places with no verbs. Page 168: âDawn. Thin and early rain.â Or page 245: âThe small hours. Dawn slow coming, rain gone. Aldeigh at uneasy rest.â I happened to be reading another book that was using similar constructions and it was driving me crazy. Use full sentences, because you are throwing me out of the story every time you do this.
Another irritant was the lack of chapter numbers.
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I started Enlightenment on Nov. 1 with every intention of finishing it by Dec. 1. I had scheduled surgery Nov. 6 and thought it would be a good book choice as I recovered. As someone who has never had surgery, I totally underestimated the fact that Iâd have no interest in picking up a book, preferring something mindless. (Hello, Dancing with the Stars.) Iâm slowly moving toward an interest in picking up a book but am not leaning toward one that makes me think in any way.
Anyway, I made it to page 75 in Enlightenment before surgery. My thoughts: I remember two distinctly. The book hadnât grabbed my attention yet, and I couldnât put my finger on where the author headed. Homosexuality? The comet? Bethesda? Grace and Nathan? The unknown woman in the photo? Etc.
I didnât dislike the book and felt the author could/would tie all her threads together by the end. However, I only had pricks of interest in any of the subjects thrown at me by that point. Again, so many bits and pieces that had yet to mesh. TBH, Thomasâ newspaper articles interested me most and I hoped the book headed in that direction. I didnât particularly like Grace (the description of greasy hair, etc - yuck) and never believed in the quick attraction between Grace and Nathan.
Oh ⊠I had trouble placing the story in fairly current day. It seemed more in the 1800s for some reason.
Will I finish the book at some point? Like @CBBBlinker, I always finish a book ⊠or at least I have in the past. I have to say that this discussion is not the most encouraging. My other problem is that the last couple IRL book club books have been discouraging to say the least. One I truly disliked and the other sits next to Enlightenment with only about 75 pages read.
It might be time to back away from book club choices and read nothing but fun. I have several series that I need to finish but never have the time due to book club books. (Iâm in three book clubs.)
Anyway, as usual, Iâm enjoying the discussion and the insights into the book. If I finish the book, Iâll pop back in with my two cents. It wonât be anytime soon though.
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Hope your surgery recovery is going smoothly, and great to see you posting !!! Youâre back 
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1000%! There was so little to suggest that it was the 21st century, and Thomas and Dimi seemed like theyâd stepped out of another era. I believe that was deliberate on Perryâs part as regards Thomas â both he and his work have âan old-fashioned feelâ says Carleton â but it pervades the entire novel.
Like âŠin 2017, Thomas and Nathan go to the Aldleigh Museum, where the receptionist leads them down the hall to a reading room with an ancient leather desk to look at 150-year old documents, then brings them two cups of tea. My daughter is a museum archivist and thereâs just no way.
Yep, totally with you here as well. Did anyone notice that Grace is almost always describedâŠdistastefully? Greasy hair, dirty clothes and an odd smell: Nathan âdisliked the smell of the oils she used on her hair and skinâ and Thomas described it as âa little feral and rising out of her scalp.â
Sarah Perry canât have wanted us to like Grace, not when her petulant behavior is combined with other assaults on our senses. Maybe this is yet another testament to Thomas and his generous heart.* Whatâs the expression? âItâs the least lovable people who need love the most.â
*Edited to add: Just remembered that his full name is Thomas Hart. 
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Clearly, Grace was as unappealing to the reader, perhaps so we side with Thomas when he sends Nathan away. How could Nathan truly be attracted to Grace for the right reasons.
Was it Grace who brought Dimi to her home? Was it Grace who stood up against rude Lorna ? and Grace who cared for Thomas when he was bedridden?
Come to think of it, as I flip through the book, I find that nothing smells very good. 
Seriously! Here are a few quotes:
ââŠshe had the sour smell of an untended bodyâŠâ
âThe tall broad body smelled as if it were failing, as all bodies fail in the end.â
ââŠthe rank scent of the cheese and the exhausted tulips stirring his stomachâŠâ
ââŠthe scent of her cheap jasmine perfume that came in a tin, of butter going bad in the dish, of herself.â
ââŠa scent like that of leaf mold in autumn came out of the carpet.â
ââŠshe didnât want this man of sorrows with his rank-smelling velvet in her room.â
âJames Bower was at his side, smelling of soot and antiseptic.â
âAnd what a reek there was hereabouts, the fox thought, kicking up cigarette butts and nosing at paper greased with scraps of food â what a reek, what a stench!â
Any counteracting pleasant smells are very rare â occasionally, soap and once roses. I know we canât smell through the pages, but I think all those descriptions subconsciously contributed to the âickâ mood of the novel.
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Agreed. Not love â it seems to be based on some sort of animal attraction, rather than anything Nathan really likes about her personality. And the attraction persists â he feels it still, decades later (and acts on it), but doesnât have the slightest desire to share his life with her.
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I was so annoyed by her constant description of how things, settings or people smelled. Lazy writing, like she had a formula for writing
Yes, the ICK FACTOR
Aroma, scents 
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Further thoughts on this ⊠Another review of Enlightenment has this quote from Sarah Perry:
My parents are devoutly Christian, members of one of the few Strict Baptist chapels left in Essex. Itâs hard to explain how it was to be brought up in that chapel and that home: often I say, laughingly, âI grew up in 1895â, because it seems the best way of evoking the Bible readings and Beethoven, the Victorian hymns and the print of Pilgrimâs Progress, and the Sunday school seaside outings when we all sang grace before our sausage and chips in three-part harmony.
The reviewer then writes:
Although the story is contemporaneous to our times, it feels decidedly old-fashioned or historical due to the nature of its topics as well as its narrative style. Given what Perry tells us about her childhood, it is no wonder that her novels should also feel like they are outside of time, on the periphery of the modern world.Enlightenment | Sarah Perry â This Reading Life
So while I now understand the autobiographical underpinnings, the old-fashioned setting and narrative style still donât really work for me. You need to know a lot about Sarah Perryâs history to appreciate a good swath of this novel, and Iâm of the opinion that needing this type of context shouldnât be necessary when reading a novel.
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FWIW I figure the Aldleigh Museum is one of those collections thatâs barely a real museum with people who arenât trained properly. And itâs tea. You have to have tea!
Did I already say my favorite part was Thomasâs little musings?
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