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Loading... Enlightenment (edition 2024)by Sarah Perry (Author) dchaikin | Sep 7, 2024 |   OPD: 2024 format: 378-page hardcover acquired: August 2 read: Aug 25-31 time reading: 12:33, 2 mpp rating: 3½ genre/style: contemporary fiction theme: Booker 2024 locations: Essex 1997-2017 about the author: English author born in 1979 in Chelmsford, Essex, into a family of devout Christians who were members of the Strict Baptist church. My fourth from the Booker longlist is one that I'm hesitant to admit I did not like. This is an Essex novel, trying to capture a small town feel in the flat muddy region, its history and present, and the feel of a local isolated religious group, the Strict Baptists. It's also a mystery novel with a ghost of sorts. The main character, Thomas Hart, lives at least two lives, one in the church, one in London where he can be openly gay. And arguably a third in his newspaper column where he can write along the edges for his lost faith, pondering the skies and the sciences. The secondary main character, Grace Macaulay, is a teenager in the community, without a mother, and with a kind of removed, Bible-toting but kindly father. She takes to Thomas as a father figure. She is faithful but will struggle with that. In the midst of them is an abandoned house, once owned by a church founder with an eccentric Romanian wife. There are a lot of mysteries and stories about this woman, who may have been an early astronomer. Comets, past and present, have some prominence. She, this Romanian woman, has a ghostly real presence in Thomas's mind. The story as told lies somewhere between contemporary realism and tall tale remove. Much of real life is washed away, invisible - practical stressful realities are not just left off the page, they lie far far away. We can put all our attention on faith and community and a mystery. In tune with this is the way historical relics show up without effort, dropping on people's laps when needed, and disappearing just as carelessly. No one seems particularly concerned with where they go, or what's lost without them. So light and fun with a light-fun mystery and also some profound mixture of stars, comets and wavering faith. Some readers take to the book on this level. I admit, I tried the light and fun. But then I didn't want to take anything seriously. I had trouble trying to do both. I have one bitter thought. It goes something like this: am I uncomfortable with the religious aspects, or with its presentation? Is this sanitized take all just a way to coddle the religious issues in a story: keeping things slightly removed from the necessary complications of reality; obscuring issues with a simple mystery, and by an, at best, surficial touch on astronomy and its vast possible meanings? I mean, when we look at our own divine perspectives and the vastness of space and blend them, why does it feel to me like Perry has filtered out so much? Of course, it's not really a deep look at faith, since nothing doctrinal is mentioned, only church's rejection of homosexuality and many contemporary pleasures, like movies and fashion. So my thought is overkill. I do think the book is kind of love story of Perry and toward her Strict Baptist community, including all the discomfort she herself has had with it. I believe she broke with the church as some point (I haven't confirmed that). There were things I liked. It has a charm, and complexity to it. The main characters are embraceable. It leaves a feeling of small-town Essex, child of the medieval Battle of Malden, of its mud and sea-flooding, a sheltered train ride from materialist London. The book struggles amongst itself in interesting ways. It can compel. I wanted to see Thomas happy. And Grace go back in time and fill in the living part of life. I’m just way more stuck on the problems above. Anyway, as I said above, I didn't take to this. It seems to be a divider among Booker readers, so I recommended mostly to the intrepid. 2024 https://www.librarything.com/topic/362165#8616961 (  ) dchaikin | Sep 7, 2024 | Thomas Hart is a man living in the small town of Adleigh, Essex. He attends a strict Baptist Church , and struggles with his faith vs. his life as a closeted gay man. Grace Macauley is a close friend of Thomas, though she is three decades younger than him. Both attend the same church and labour with their beliefs vs. the natural world. Over time, both deal with unrequited love. Thomas becomes obsessed with a married man, who is not interested in returning his affections. Grace becomes equally obsessed with a young man , Nathan. Initially, Nathan returns Grace's love, but soon the relationship is torn apart. This is a story about unrequited love, which is reflected by the orbit of the planets and comets. It is also the story of adherence to strict Christian faith , and desire to pursue natural urges. I felt this story had promise, if only Sarah Perry had delved deeper into the two main characters thoughts and conflicts. It was very much longer than it needed to be. I am not much interested in astronomy , so the abundance of writing on this topic was a drag for me. (  )2  vancouverdeb | Aug 27, 2024 | But, oh, lord, the characters. Thomas Hart is sympathetic: a gentle, lonely man, contending with a battle between his nature and his soul as a deeply-closeted gay man in a narrow-minded fundamentalist church, escaping regularly for binges of anonymous sex in London; a passionate amateur astronomer, he is also prone to sudden overwhelming affections for unavailable and inappropriate people. The point is belabored to death that - like comets and planets - humans may be simply bound by the laws of physics and the universe to be who they are, to travel the orbits they travel, accelerating or exploding due to uncontrollable forces. One of his loves is Grace (okay, Sarah, we get it...), a much younger woman for whom he fell hard when she was a baby (!) brought in for baptism. His "friendship" with her makes no sense, is inexplicable, and she is one of the most obnoxious characters I've slogged through in a long time. Feckless, selfish, abrasive, yet spouting theological exigeses of her faith. Perry develops a trope about her: she is *repeatedly* described as a sort of "hard, burrowing animal," forcing "hard, burrowing hugs" on people. She is also often described as "affectionate," when she is entirely self-absorbed, ungenerous, demanding, performative, and unreliable. Similarly, Perry tags Hart's "good manners" and "politeness" over and over again. To see Perry *writing* so clumsily and repeating her imagery and even exact phrases across hundreds of pages is disappointing. The plot, such as it is, follows Thomas and Grace over several decades, through long separations and re-encounters. There are too many discussions of religion and faith and the difficulty in leaving it behind. Both carry torches for their unavailable (and mostly uninteresting) love interests throughout their lives. And so does a ghost - of an unrecognized woman astronomer who hovers at the edges of Thomas's researches into an impending comet passage, who *also* hugged a hopeless passion for an unavailable man her entire life. There are other friendships that dry up or end, and several of them conclude with the beloved person dying but no one knows enough to tell the people who have loved them. Once, it's affecting and poignant... but to repeat it in other pairings is too much. Three quarters of the way through the book, Grace's lost love (a callow, flat teenaged boy who serviced her sexual awakening) coincidentally reappears in her life. Strangely, he is now suddenly adorned with kindness and merriment and lovingness he definitely never exhibited the first time around. Wishful thinking? I nearly quit then. But I trudged - somewhat resentfully - to the end. Thing is, I still kind of keep thinking about some aspects of the book. Perry still has the ability to turn a gorgeous sentence. She does examine with care and serious thought deeply confounding issues of faith, church, God, community, family, friendship, love, light and the universe. But somehow her own grace in the writing has faltered, serving up cliches and stereotypes and repetitions that attentive editing should have questioned. The book is way too long, says too many of the same things too many times, and if characters do not engage our sympathies and interest on some level, we won't want to spend time with them. Some things of value, but overall a deep disappointment with a writer I admired hugely a few years before. (  )1 JulieStielstra | Jul 14, 2024 | The center of this novel is Thomas Hart, a middle aged man at the beginning of the book, who writes a column in the local paper. He is straight out of the past - wearing formal clothes, speaking in an old-fashioned way, continuing to favor letters over email or the phone. He is also gay, but a member of a strict Baptist church, so he hides this from others and practically from himself. He stayed in the church when he was drawn to a baby girl whose mother died and whose father is a member of the church. The two have a deep connection, Grace Macaulay and Thomas Hart. Grace is in her teenage years when the book begins, and with that comes all the rebellion and soul searching and love interest that you would expect. Unfortunately, Thomas and Grace have a falling out. Over the next twenty years they will be drawn back together, though whether they'll forgive each other will be the question. Tying this all together is a subplot that is integrated beautifully. Thomas Hart, early in the book, is assigned to write about the Hale-Bopp Comet. This prompts a love of amateur astronomy that continues through his life. He also finds a local story about a woman who went missing in the late 1800s named Maria Vaduva, whose incomplete letters and diary are found. Her story, and the story of her forays into astronomy, bind the book together. This all sounds complicated and I didn't even tell half of it, but Perry does an amazing job of tying everything together seamlessly. There is no "dual timeline" or "flashback" to Maria Vaduva's life - it's all integrated perfectly into the present day story. Though, as I said, the present day story barely feels present-day with Perry's quirky Victorian writing style and characters. I'm not doing justice to this novel. It's so hard to describe. I found it completely original and captivating. I think it's her best book to date and I hope she keeps writing more novels. I will try them all! (  ) japaul22 | Jun 11, 2024 | There is always a strong theme of the supernatural in Perry's writings and here is no different but it is less overt and more of a background influence. The story is not about haunting but about discovery and regret, it is slow but beautifully written and the prose draws the reader in until they become completely invested in the lives of this small community, a wonderful read. (  ) pluckedhighbrow | May 8, 2024 | |
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2
OPD: 2024
format: 378-page hardcover
acquired: August 2 read: Aug 25-31 time reading: 12:33, 2 mpp
rating: 3½
genre/style: contemporary fiction theme: Booker 2024
locations: Essex 1997-2017
about the author: English author born in 1979 in Chelmsford, Essex, into a family of devout Christians who were members of the Strict Baptist church.
My fourth from the Booker longlist is one that I'm hesitant to admit I did not like. This is an Essex novel, trying to capture a small town feel in the flat muddy region, its history and present, and the feel of a local isolated religious group, the Strict Baptists. It's also a mystery novel with a ghost of sorts. The main character, Thomas Hart, lives at least two lives, one in the church, one in London where he can be openly gay. And arguably a third in his newspaper column where he can write along the edges for his lost faith, pondering the skies and the sciences. The secondary main character, Grace Macaulay, is a teenager in the community, without a mother, and with a kind of removed, Bible-toting but kindly father. She takes to Thomas as a father figure. She is faithful but will struggle with that. In the midst of them is an abandoned house, once owned by a church founder with an eccentric Romanian wife. There are a lot of mysteries and stories about this woman, who may have been an early astronomer. Comets, past and present, have some prominence. She, this Romanian woman, has a ghostly real presence in Thomas's mind.
The story as told lies somewhere between contemporary realism and tall tale remove. Much of real life is washed away, invisible - practical stressful realities are not just left off the page, they lie far far away. We can put all our attention on faith and community and a mystery. In tune with this is the way historical relics show up without effort, dropping on people's laps when needed, and disappearing just as carelessly. No one seems particularly concerned with where they go, or what's lost without them. So light and fun with a light-fun mystery and also some profound mixture of stars, comets and wavering faith. Some readers take to the book on this level. I admit, I tried the light and fun. But then I didn't want to take anything seriously. I had trouble trying to do both.
I have one bitter thought. It goes something like this: am I uncomfortable with the religious aspects, or with its presentation? Is this sanitized take all just a way to coddle the religious issues in a story: keeping things slightly removed from the necessary complications of reality; obscuring issues with a simple mystery, and by an, at best, surficial touch on astronomy and its vast possible meanings? I mean, when we look at our own divine perspectives and the vastness of space and blend them, why does it feel to me like Perry has filtered out so much?
Of course, it's not really a deep look at faith, since nothing doctrinal is mentioned, only church's rejection of homosexuality and many contemporary pleasures, like movies and fashion. So my thought is overkill. I do think the book is kind of love story of Perry and toward her Strict Baptist community, including all the discomfort she herself has had with it. I believe she broke with the church as some point (I haven't confirmed that).
There were things I liked. It has a charm, and complexity to it. The main characters are embraceable. It leaves a feeling of small-town Essex, child of the medieval Battle of Malden, of its mud and sea-flooding, a sheltered train ride from materialist London. The book struggles amongst itself in interesting ways. It can compel. I wanted to see Thomas happy. And Grace go back in time and fill in the living part of life. I’m just way more stuck on the problems above.
Anyway, as I said above, I didn't take to this. It seems to be a divider among Booker readers, so I recommended mostly to the intrepid.
2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/362165#8616961 (