The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Enlightenment by Sarah Perry (Jonathan Cape)

I read an ARC of this a couple of months ago and adored it. So happy to see it on the longlist. I think a lot of people are going to find it perfectly marvelous. I can't quite grasp why The Essex Serpent hasn't stayed top of mind for many bookish peeps. It was a practically perfect book that seemed to have been universally loved. This too is a book that showcases flawed humans reaching for kindness. It's fiercely intelligent and resolutely joyful.

I reviewed it on my BookTube channel here - https://youtu.be/t8fyJqhyNXQ

Glad you liked this, Daniel. I just started it, and I’m liking it so far, though certain details are confusing. For example, what is the special connection between Thomas and Grace Macaulay? It seemed to start when she was a baby, but there wasn’t a good explanation for it.

Gwendolyn, it takes the whole book I think, especially the first two parts, to appreciate how the Thomas and Grace connection came to be.

I loved this book. It was the atmosphere the author created that drew me in. Thomas was a great character, so richly drawn and believable for me. I was so sorry when it ended that I just turned back to the beginning and read it again. It was just as good the second time.

Yes it’s a slow burn of a novel but I ended impressed.

I fall a little below the rave reviews it is getting. I think the ending is the strongest part (finally making a point). It is one I'd consider more admirable than enjoyable.

This was my kind of book....gothic, well written, mysterious, complicated characters, a small amount of magic with some astronomy/physics thrown in. I enjoyed all 508 pages (I was reading the large print version....the only one my library had) and did not want it to end.

I can see that this would not be for everyone, but for me it ticked all my boxes. It reminded me a little of This Other Eden (quite prosy) from last year's Booker and also Claire Fuller (particularly Bitter Orange). I love it when the landscape/locations have a personality of their own. I have not read any Sarah Perry before, so when this Booker madness is over I will certainly be reading more.

Of the 5 books I have read so far - this has been the one I have enjoyed the most.

I liked this one too. It reminded me of Marilynne Robinson with all the religion, small town dynamics, and quirky, somewhat isolated characters. I mostly enjoyed the tone and pace, which felt quite old-fashioned. Even the writing seemed like it came from another century. Occasionally, the story/tone felt maybe too ponderous, and the book dragged a bit for me in those places. Overall, though, I enjoyed this a lot and find myself thinking about the story and characters even now.

I have read all of the authors novels.

In terms of the view that her writing seems from a different century

“I think there was a feeling and perhaps there still is a feeling that my writing was imitative of Victorian literature. And that’s not the case. The fact is that my influences, and my world, were Victorian.”

And in terms of length of her books and her style and references

“There’s a certain terminology around the kind of literature that will always pop up on best books of the year, say: it’s very taut, very spare, as if it’s a woman who’s expected to be very thin. People write about books as if they’re women’s bodies: slender, there’s barely anything there. And I don’t write like that. I can’t. I don’t live like that. For a little while, I thought perhaps I ought to give it a shot. And it was like writing for a year with my left hand. It was just painful and terrible. So I then came to terms with the fact that this is how I write, and how could I not when I was raised reciting reams of the King James Bible and reading Shakespeare for fun? I’m not going to suddenly write frictionless prose with no speech marks.”

Susan wrote: "This was my kind of book....gothic, well written, mysterious, complicated characters, a small amount of magic with some astronomy/physics thrown in. I enjoyed all 508 pages (I was reading the large..."

I love this type of book, too. I thought it was a gorgeous book. I'm not a religious person myself, but I enjoyed it in this book because I loved everything else about the book. I'm not a fan of spare, lean prose, though I don't want filler, but Perry doesn't write filler. All 500+ pages need to be there.

This book and Held are my personal favorites, and I can see both of them making the shortlist, but I can't see either winning. I still think the winner is going to be Playground, and I have no problem with that. I loved Playground.

Thank you, GY for the quotes from Perry.

Note: Changed my mind after letting the book settle for a few days. Now I hate it. I love Victorian literature, and this book lured me in with a distinct Victorian feel, but that has worn off.

So far, I love the tone of his! no idea what is going on, but I want to read more of the prose and the characters. And I also love the quotes. thank you for them!

This is my 3rd book from the longlist and I am really enjoying it so far (about a quarter of the way in).

So far it's top of my list, above Held (which started well but faded) and Headshot (which was kind of interesting but rather average).

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "I have read all of the authors novels.

In terms of the view that her writing seems from a different century

“I think there was a feeling and perhaps there still is a feeling that my writing wa..."

Ah, yes, this makes perfect sense that Perry’s influences are Victorian. I enjoyed this style, and I think it fit the setting/plot very well. Interesting comment by Perry about how contemporary novels are often compared to women’s bodies (slender, etc.). I enjoy “chubbier” prose as long as it isn’t flabby. To me, Wellness (for example) was flabby but Enlightenment is pleasingly plump.

Like her main character she was bought up in the Strict Baptist denomination - strict in both a literal (rejecting most worldly influences) and theological (restricting communion to members only associated with a Calvinistic theology of the elect) - both of those meanings of course critical to the novel.

Just starting this. 30 pages in and already I can feel myself sinking into the book which is lovely.

Are the previous books written in a similar prose? If so, I must check them out.

I think I'm the minority here but I finished it this morning and HATED it

Perhaps the minority but surely not alone. What didn’t work for you?

I found it very melodramatic, and that the story it was trying to tell did not deserve the melodrama, as if the plot couldn't handle the weight of the prose.

I found all the characters very uninteresting too. Everyone refuses to let go of the past, which leads to a lot of emotional repetition, and to me I felt very disconnected from the root causes of all these "conflicts." (to me they felt more like miscommunications than anything, that a few conversations and maybe some therapy could solve) But no, everyone stews and wallows and that is just so boring and infuriating.

The Maria stuff was so boring too I don't get why Thomas cares so much- and so much meaningful discovery was just... on accident? Like I could not care any less.

And the way the characters spoke??? So annoying, nobody talks like that. I tend to like more grounded dialogue in my literary fiction, with a touch of the purple, but everyone talked and wrote like a poet, and if anyone was talking to me like that I would be rolling my eyes into the back of my skull. I come to litfic to be grounded in the everyday and find the beauty in the ordinary, but MAN this was so stilted that it took me so wildly out of it.

That’s fair. I would have actually preferred more melodrama and stylized dialogue. The book needed more spice.

I thought this hit just the right spot between the melodrama and the mundane. The prose really worked for me, and the novel seemed... complete in a way others were not. Enlightenment is very successful in what it does, I think. I can see people not loving the tone, but when I finished, I had no major complaints or regrets. Everything fit. It does not feel like it has an appeal broad enough to win the Booker, but I do hope it makes the short list!

David wrote: "That’s fair. I would have actually preferred more melodrama and stylized dialogue. The book needed more spice."

It needed more of something. Initially, I loved it. I loved the way it began. I have a now-embarrassing post on here somewhere saying I loved it, but I wasn't very far into it at that time, maybe 20%, when I made that post. I kept falling asleep while reading it because it was boring. I don't know why people cared the way they did, especially about Maria. The prose was okay. There was certainly nothing wrong with it that I could see other than being a little stilted, but I had to keep reminding myself I was reading a book set in modern times. It felt so Victorian. I do love Victorian literature and quasi-Victorian, which probably caused my initial enthusiasm, but I agree with David, it needed more of something. I have to move it down on my list.

Garrett wrote: "I found it very melodramatic, and that the story it was trying to tell did not deserve the melodrama, as if the plot couldn't handle the weight of the prose.

I found all the characters very uninte..."

I just pulled up the ebook and chose a page at random, and this is the quote I got: "But don't you think this is the way for us all?" said Thomas, concealing his pity. "Though I never see a river---I see the motion of bodies in orbit, drawn by forces as bright as the sun, and other forces completely unseen. Perhaps you saw the chapel by Potter's Field and it drew you down your orbit---so perhaps you still feel the heat of the sun of God."

You are right. No one speaks that way today. I don't know exactly when my enthusiasm turned to boredom and now sort of resentment for the book, but it did. It would have been better had Perry set it during Victorian times, since the characters speak in such a stilted tone, but she wanted to make use of the Hale-Bopp comet. So, being set in 1997 and forward, she should have let her characters speak the way people speak today. And the clothing. When she described the clothing, it was as if she were describing Victorian clothing. People wore boots, they wore satin dresses that swished when they walked, for goodness sake. I'm usually pretty good at choosing books I'll like, but this one fooled me. Initially, loved, until about 20%, then began to dislike; now I hate it.

Anna wrote: "I thought this hit just the right spot between the melodrama and the mundane. The prose really worked for me, and the novel seemed... complete in a way others were not. Enlightenment is very succes..."

Do you think the Booker judges care about broad appeal? I don't really know. They just seem like they do what they want to do, choose what they want to choose, whether it has broad appeal or not. I don't think Prophet Song would have had broad appeal at all had it not won the Booker. Of course, I could be completely wrong. I have been before, will be again.

Gwendolyn wrote: "I liked this one too. It reminded me of Marilynne Robinson with all the religion, small town dynamics, and quirky, somewhat isolated characters. I mostly enjoyed the tone and pace, which felt quite..."

Oh, I can't stand Marilynne Robinson's books! I'm not making a comment on the person or even saying her books aren't good, just that I can't stand them.

It's funny - I'm not done yet, but I am (still) loving it, and for all the reasons that those dislike it, I am enjoying it.

What first captured me was the prose. I can completely understand others not getting along with it, but for me it is enchanting. It's an antiquated, Victorian style that is irresistibly lush; I feel as if I am gorging on the sentences: they are rich and decadent.

I don't think it's subtle, but I do enjoy the parallels between the human story and the cosmic. The narratives and characters orbit and eclipse one another; and at times you can feel the momentum drawing threads together and they almost collide but, as far as I am yet, do not. You can feel the conservation of momentum in their orbits.

In terms of dialogue, you're right: no one talks like this! Yet I can't help but feel that this is the way these characters speak and it doesn't feel necessarily wrong. In many ways, Thomas is caught in the past; Grace is raised rather strictly close to scripture.

[What's a book that rings true in its dialogue? My vote from 'recent' a Booker nominee would be Who They Was by Krauze.]

It is, to me, all very convincing.

[Maybe this will change though - I have about a third left.]

Garrett wrote: "I found it very melodramatic, and that the story it was trying to tell did not deserve the melodrama, as if the plot couldn't handle the weight of the prose.

I found all the characters very uninte..."

That's interesting, I passed on an ARC of this a while ago mainly because I loathed The Essex Serpent and your comments on this overlap with my thoughts about that.

Except for Housekeeping I've also found it impossible to sustain interest in Robinson's fiction, so looks as if I made the right choice - at least for me!

Alwynne wrote: "That's interesting, I passed on an ARC of this a while ago mainly because I loathed The Essex Serpent and your comments on this overlap with my thoughts about that.

Except for Housekeeping I've also found it impossible to sustain interest in Robinson's fiction, so looks as if I made the right choice - at least for me!"

I also low-key hated The Essex Serpent and so have had absolutely no inclination to pick Enlightenment up... but that's actually very helpful about Robinson's books - I keep hearing raves, but the descriptions never seem to interest me - and if there are similarities with Perry, that confirms my gut feeling that they're not for me!

On broad appeal - I think the implication of this is that the book won’t have such appeal - I suspect Perry is one of the most commercially successful authors on the list at least in the UK.

Essex Serpent sold 200,000 copies in hardback (which is astonishing for literary fiction), it won the British Book Awards which as we have commented elsewhere is more an award for books which drive visits to bookshops, and it’s been turned into an Apple TV series.

Separately I love Marilynne Robinson

I do not find the dress here peculiar but more Particular - there is a Strict Peculiar Baptist church in my town which I have been opposite before and after the service.

And while Thomas’s speech is very old fashioned - it’s marked as such by his newspaper boss from the very first pages and based on a deliberate rejection of the modern world and inspired by the KJV. But I don’t think Carleton is at old fashioned in his speech is he in that first chapter?

It’s also not that different from people I have encountered over the years (particularly at University and in religious circles but also in business). I can’t say I have ever met anyone that talks like a character in Who They Was.

It's not that I dislike the characters, it's that I find it hard to form an emotional connection to them so I care deeply about what happens to them, but I give Perry credit for making both Thomas and Grace imperfect, so a reader can form an emotional connection. I can even accept that being a part of a strict religious community makes their speech more formal and leaves them more naive and far less worldly than everyday characters, but what I can't forgive is the lack of tension in the book. I didn't feel a need or even an inclination to keep turning the pages. I did wonder why Grace kept having to make her own dresses out of leftover fabric from the strangest things. I wondered why her father didn't at least clothe his daughter in dresses suitable for the church to which they belonged. In one part, she wonders what it would be like to wear ripped jeans and trendy tops, and I can understand why he doesn't buy her those things, but not dresses suitable for the church where they are members. I can understand why she didn't have more of a birthday party than the one in the first half. I'm kind of surprised she got that much. I do believe that much of our lives is due to luck, being in the right place at the right time, producing something at the exact time we did, marketing it in the way it was marketed, but I guess I didn't get the connection of the characters' lives to the appearance of the comet as much as Perry probably wanted a reader to.

Great comments.

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "And while Thomas’s speech is very old fashioned - it’s marked as such by his newspaper boss from the very first pages and based on a deliberate rejection of the modern world and inspired by the KJV."

Yes, and it feels appropriate to me that this is the way Thomas speaks. Similarly for Grace.

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "I can’t say I have ever met anyone that talks like a character in Who They Was."

I grew up in Scarborough (outskirts of Toronto, ON) and the way the characters in Who They Was speak rang true to my ears - it was very interesting to see the language I was surrounded by every day (English, yes, but with lots of British and Caribbean slang) in print. I found the reading experience extremely smooth - but that's just because that's the way the people I knew growing up spoke (and is the way they still speak today outside of professional settings). - which is why I proposed Who They Was as ringing true in its dialogue.

I guess in both cases it’s affected speech but drawing on different influences - Jamaican slang and US gang terms vs King James Bible laced Victorian formality.

I agree with a lot of what Kiki and Garrett are saying about this book—lack of tension, formal Victorian prose, stilted dialogue, clothing that strains credulity—and yet, I quite enjoyed it. Funny how that works. I grew up reading all the classics, and this feels like falling back into that world. It was comforting. I did have to remind myself over and over that the book starts in 1997 and goes forward from there.

I a big fan so far with about 15% left to read. I enjoyed reading the comments on the prose styling by the author. I think in discussing the stylization it is better to use examples from film. Alfred Hitchcock, Ken Russell, Wes Anderson, and Baz Luhrmann are all recognizable stylists when it comes to film. In literature, I think of Cervantes, Sterne, Fielding, Austen, Carlyle, Dickens, Woolf, Vonnegut, or Ali Smith. The whole history of novels remembers and praises the stylists so I think the question becomes whether Perry's stylizations work and IMO they do. I think they add to the atmosphere and mystery unlike Orbital, I di not find myself envisioning the author typing, but was fully engaged with what she wrote. I am thinking this will be a top five for me.

I've said it before but I really did love Enlightenment. It is so atmospheric. I loved the characters -- so real. I had no problem when the way they speak - fits with where their background. I did not find it stilted. How Thomas and Grace became estranged is what happens in life and at least they were able to reach an accommodation that allowed them to be in each other's lives. Perhaps there is a generational difference in who likes and who doesn't like the book.

The religion theme was very well done, showing various ways of believing with no condemnation of any. Of course, Marilynne Robinson is an author whose work I find to be quite amazing.

Just finished this and it is going straight to the top of my list. Yes, its virtues are old fashioned, the plot is contrived and it could be seen as too sentimental and romantic, but it spoke to me in a way that nothing else on this list did, and is atmospheric and evocative.

Hugh wrote: "Just finished this and it is going straight to the top of my list. Yes, its virtues are old fashioned, the plot is contrived and it could be seen as too sentimental and romantic, but it spoke to me..."

I didn't find it too sentimental or romantic, but I did find the obsession with Maria a little strange, but not so strange that I didn't enjoy the book. I probably enjoyed reading this one more than any of the others, except maybe Held. In fact, I now want to read The Essex Serpent, which is set in the Victorian period, so Perry's prose will be a better fit in that book, I think. I enjoyed the prose a lot, but I had to keep reminding myself we were in 1997 and beyond.

I liked this a lot too but I would think it was a better book if the Maria ghost character was not in it - but Perry does not set out to right anything other than expensive/maximalist plots and so there will always be elements that don’t fully appeal.

Have to say what a great surprise this one was. I've not read her previous work so I was expecting something quite lightweight based on her mass commercial success.
Boy was I wrong. There really is a great depth to this novel and it deals with so many topics that ordinary people can relate to. Personally I had no problem with the dialogue.
There is a real and true sense of place throughout the novel too. Perhaps it helps that I know that part of Essex quite well but I really felt myself within the landscape of the novel.
I am also full of admiration that she chose to pin so much of the novel on a relationship between an older man and a young girl/woman. So refreshingly done. Of course there are times where the plot stretches the imagination and I think it could have done with some tighter editing and the removal of around 20 pages. I also think that it will work at different levels for people of different ages. I'm getting towards wrong end of life now and some of the scenes around old age, illness and dying I thought were the most moving in the book. I'm sure I would have read those sections differently 30 or so years ago.
Thomas is such a well drawn character and you see not only his good side but also his bad. Both are laid out with equal skill and dexterity.
Also I have to say that the writing is actually of a really high standard.

So good to be pleasantly surprised by a book on this longlist which for me has been a rarity this year.

I really liked this in a second read.

I particularly appreciated how so much of the plot and structure mirrors the astronomy - periodic orbits, binary stars and particularly the way that the slow form of the plot in the second section (which I felt dragged first time) is based on Kepler’s second law.

Three days in, I gave up on this one. DNF. Just too atmospheric and ghostly for my taste. That said, I can appreciate the writing style, it’s just not for me.

I only just finished this and so these are just my initial thoughts, but I absolutely loved it and think it is Perry's best book to date. I already am excited to read it again. It is not only, with one book to go, my favorite of the longlist, it is easily one of my favorite reads of the year.

I can completely understand why this novel is not for everyone, but I thought the writing was gorgeous and very assured, the story complex and satisfying and the way astronomy was woven into the whole was incredibly impressive. An easy five stars for me.

Cindy wrote: "I only just finished this and so these are just my initial thoughts, but I absolutely loved it and think it is Perry's best book to date. I already am excited to read it again. It is not only, with..."

I enjoyed reading this, Cindy, but I don't think it's anything that's going to stay with me for a long time. I did like it well enough to buy Perry's book The Essex Serpent. I like the writing, too, but like GY, I think this would have been a better book had the Maria character not been in it, Either that, or she needed to strengthen Maria's importance. I don't expect it to be on the shortlist, it's too conventional, but if it does make the shortlist, I won't be disappointed.

My favorite, far and away is Held despite its rather chaotic ending. I still think Playground is the best book and will be the winner. But, who knows? Sometimes the shortlist and the winner are very surprising.

BookerMT2 wrote: "Have to say what a great surprise this one was. I've not read her previous work so I was expecting something quite lightweight based on her mass commercial success.
Boy was I wrong. There really is..."

This book, to me, is lightweight. Lovely writing that fit the story, I really enjoyed reading it, but lightweight overall.

Cindy wrote: "I only just finished this and so these are just my initial thoughts, but I absolutely loved it and think it is Perry's best book to date. I already am excited to read it again. It is not only, with..."

I liked this one a lot too, Cindy.

Danielle wrote: "Three days in, I gave up on this one. DNF. Just too atmospheric and ghostly for my taste. That said, I can appreciate the writing style, it’s just not for me."

I DNF too - I enjoyed The Essex Serpent and downright loved Melmoth, but this reminded me of Perry's debut After Me Comes The Flood, which I also DNF. I couldn't cope with the affected quaintness here in a book that starts in 1997, and I could tell I wasn't going to connect to any of the cast.

For me the stand out quote from the book is:

Now: I’ve heard it said that at the first sip from the glass of the natural sciences you will become an atheist—then at the bottom of the glass, God will be waiting for you.

This quote is often attributed to Werner Heisenberg but Perry chose not to credit it which was fine because the attribute seems disputable. The sophistication of writing evident in the quote is not quite repeated by anything Perry writes which is a risk one takes when quoting the best. I don't think it harms the enjoyment of the novel however. Heisenberg also figures prominently in another book a I am presently reading, William Egginton's,The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality, and I am hoping to see it on the Baillie-Gifford longlist.

But surely saying “Some claim these are the words of the physicist Werner Heisenberg, and some say he never said any such thing – but it charmed me enough to seek him out on the shelves, and find as ever that my wonder and my comprehension did battle, and left me reeling. It seems to me that Heisenberg proposes this: that although the electron is certainly real, nothing we can say of its location now can do any more than say where it might probably be in the future. It is a mysterious thing, not quite existing separate from any other thing, and coming most fully into being at the moment of connection.” makes it very obvious it’s a quote and not from Perry.

You have lost me TBH.

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "But surely saying “Some claim these are the words of the physicist Werner Heisenberg, and some say he never said any such thing – but it charmed me enough to seek him out on the shelves, and find a..."

That was what I meant. She sidestepped the dispute and avoided aligning herself with any definite. She does not exactly credit Heisenberg nor does she deny him credit for the quote, instead shifting to Heisenberg's science which would form the basis for the quote, which I thought was clever and politically wise. I was not attacking her for not crediting Heisenberg, I was complimenting her for being diplomatic.

The reason I brought up the quote though was that it stood out for me in contrast to most of what Perry wrote and that usually prompts a negative reaction toward the author's own words in me. I am thinking here of books where authors utilize a number of quotes from others so that readers then remember those over what the author wrote. It almost seems as if the author is then trying to ride on the quotes she uses. I did not feel that here. Even though Perry uses the quote it is timed very well and almost seems a summation of her main theme, and it did not feel she was trying to bolster her own writing in using it. BTW, there may have been multiple quotes from others that I missed. This was the one that seemed important to me.