Enlightenment
Absorbing and affecting ... Thanks to the economical grace and emotional force of Ms. Perry’s writing, we are also held fast by other crises, inserted like tiny detonators in her narrative. Death and desolation, though all too familiar, are freshly affecting ... A novel of ideas, however, as well as one of emotion ... It is hard to think of another modern novelist who portrays religious faith with such intelligent sympathy.
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Abundant ... Has a lot to say about God, goodness and celestial bodies. It’s told from a celestial height by an orotund if unnamed narrator, who moves fluidly among the points of view of at least half a dozen characters ... To quote the very British Basil Fawlty, 'Too much of a good thing always leaves one wanting less, I always find.'
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Novels are time machines: their work is the measuring of events through time. What Perry has done in this layered, intelligent and moving book is to construct a kind of quantum novel, one that asks us to question conventional linear narratives and recognise instead what is ever-present in Perry’s luminous vision of Essex: truth, beauty and love.
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