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Contemporary fiction rarely engages with ideas of the sacred but the fourth novel by Sarah Perry, a household name after her second novel, The Essex Serpent, feels touched by the beauty of the cosmos. With nods to Eleanor Catton’s Booker-winning The Luminaries, it’s the story of Thomas Hart, a closet homosexual and unlikely star columnist of the local paper, who becomes obsessed with astronomy after his editor suggests he write about the comet Hale Bopp searing the Essex skies (fans will be pleased to learn the novel is set in the same fictional town as The Essex Serpent). He becomes obsessed with Maria Vaduva, a 19th century resident of whom barely a trace remains and, at the same time, with a local museum director, James. Deftly negotiating several plot lines, each in their own way about unrequited love, this magnificently humane novel argues that the sublime consolations of faith and science are not necessarily in opposition with each other. Surely an early contender for this year’s Booker.