**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024** A story of love and astronomy told over the course of
twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends 'Gorgeous... Ethereal'
GUARDIAN 'A book with cosmic reach' FINANCIAL TIMES 'A romance worthy of Emily Brontë' WALL
STREET JOURNAL 'A genre-bending novel of ideas' TELEGRAPH 'Sarah Perry just gets better and
better' INDEPENDENT Thomas and Grace are fellow worshippers at the Baptist chapel in the small
Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades the pair are kindred spirits
- torn between their commitment to religion and their desire for more. But their friendship is
threatened by the arrival of love. Thomas falls for James Bower who runs the local museum.
Together they develop an obsession with the vanished nineteenth-century female astronomer Maria
Veduva said to haunt a nearby manor. Inspired by Maria and the dawning realisation James may
not reciprocate his feelings Thomas finds solace studying the night skies. Could astronomy
offer as much wonder as divine or earthly love? Meanwhile Grace meets Nathan a fellow sixth
former who represents a different wilder kind of life. They are drawn passionately together
but quickly pulled apart casting Grace into the wider world and far away from Thomas. In time
the mysteries of Aldleigh are revealed bringing Thomas and Grace back to each other and to a
richer understanding of love of the nature of the world and the sheer miracle of being alive.
