In the vast cosmos | Review of Sarah Perry’s Enlightenment, longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024

What does it mean to fail oneself? Sarah Perry’s Enlightenment, longlisted for the Booker Prize this year, steps into the porous boundary between history and the now. If the novel were merely about these two, it might still succeed, but Perry’s attempt is to transcend character. Yet, Grace’s story is not merely about moral transgression; it is about the anatomy of choice itself, about what it means to know the “right” path and still helplessly, defiantly choose another. But I find it magnificent, knowledge piled on knowledge, and the matter never closed — it’s all no less strange and marvellous to me than the Resurrection, and it takes as much faith for me to believe it.” While the blurb promises an exploration of astronomy, Enlightenment ultimately veers away from the vast cosmos it gestures towards and chooses instead to ground itself in a meticulous character study.