ENLIGHTENMENT
By Sarah Perry
Jonathan Cape. 400 pages. £20.00
ISBN 978 1 787 334 991
Enlightenment is a secular book, framed in a community in the fictional town of Aldleigh, a version of Chelmsford, in Essex, were most of the characters have some kind of connection with Bethesda Chapel, which draws on a Strict and Particular Baptist church where, Perry says, in an interview for The Guardian, ‘I spent an enormous part of my childhood and youth.’
Thomas, the main protagonist, is a gay man who lives a solitary life, fascinated by the heavens, and writes a column for the local paper, while being in love with the married head of the local museums service. His life pursues the forgotten history of a woman who he sees in the background of a photo taken on the day Bethesda opened in 1888, and who he begins to suspect first discovered a certain comet, the appearances of which in 1997, 2008 and 2017, anchor the flow of time through the novel.
The names and incidents that occur in the novel echo the Bible – Thomas, whose father had been pastor of Bethesda Chapel, but who is doubting throughout, remarks: ‘I lost my faith … I don’t know where I’ve put it, and now my house is empty and I live alone.’ He endures an accident that leaves him limping, like Jacob, through his life, with ‘the old wounds in his hip and heart’ that give him trouble, and ‘still feared death’s sting’. He is Thomas Hart, and we see Thomas’ heart.
Then Grace Macauley, who seeks grace, perhaps fruitlessly, through being baptised in Bethesda chapel, but when asked years later if she has abandoned Bethesda replies, ‘that’s like asking if we’ve abandoned our bones.’ Also Maria, the woman from 1888 for whom Thomas searches, yet who is an almost presence. We even tread across Potters Field.
Reader, do not fear
Christians may approach, with a certain trepidation, writing – fiction and non-fiction – produced by those who once professed faith, expecting, not without just cause, that the church and perhaps the Bible will be given short shrift. Perry does not write in this way, and the novel reflects what she says of herself that ‘for so much of my life, I loved God. And there’s parts of me now in which that goes round and round like an echo that never fades.’ She readily speaks of how ‘My closest loved ones who are still in the church would absolutely hold to Protestant, reformation theology.’ Her first acknowledgement is to say: ‘Thank you to my parents, who raised me in the light of God and science together.’
Respectfully written
The Christian faith of the numerous minor characters is described but never mocked. It is the most curmudgeonly of the Particular Baptist characters, Ronald Macauley, who was ‘a man for whom no natural love could match his love for heaven’ and who was surprised each time he awoke ‘to find he wasn’t yet in glory’, but who in the end is the one who ‘understood most and was least troubled.’
The writing is often beautiful, especially in its precise capture of moments, as of the woman in Bethesda who ‘moistened her lips with a delicate, sharp tongue’, and the acute observation that ‘the milky chapel lights were shining on their iron chains.’ There is a quiet humour as when the Bethesda folk, on Grace’s birthday sing Happy Birthday ‘in the full harmony every good Baptist learns in the chapel pew’. Indeed, Thomas begins to sing at one point, ‘and so did Grace, because Bethesda had given them the habit of song.’
Enlightenment is a novel about love, displayed, perhaps unknowingly, in unexpected ways and moments by almost every character. ‘How immense love is’ thinks Thomas, ‘how surprising.’ I read many novels but am rarely moved as by reading Enlightenment.
