The Essex Serpent author on astronomy, her new novel Enlightenment and how her strict Baptist upbringing made its mark
For weeks, Sarah Perry has been petitioning the heavens for a clear evening so that she can show me her telescope in action, but tonight the skies over Norwich are cloudy. I must content myself with looking at the instrument at rest and noting that it’s a big bit of kit, not remotely the kind of thing you just shove up against your eye. By most people’s standards, Perry is a serious astronomer – she has a tattoo of Halley’s comet below her heart – although she would probably counter that she doesn’t have the mathematical ability to undertake in-depth research. Nonetheless, the fact that she has discussed these matters with the Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli and thanks him in the acknowledgments to her new novel, Enlightenment, tells you that she’s not exactly a slouch.
“I said to him, ‘I love the ideas of physics so much, I read and watch lectures and do my little calculations when it’s within my capacity, but I can’t do the maths.’ And he told me that he loves music, Bach in particular, but he can’t read music. He said, ‘I love the music and I understand music, I just can’t read the score, and that’s what it’s like for you. You love the physics, you grasp it, you understand it, you just can’t read the score.’ And it was so moving.” She pauses. “And it meant that I didn’t have to go and do A-level maths!”
