Francis Spufford can write. He can write detailed passages that evoke all sorts of emotional responses. He can bring characters to life. He can set a stage with precision. And I loved seeing all of that in this book, but I couldn't get past the premise that is set up right from the beginning- that the lives we follow in the book were actually lives taken in 1944 in a bomb that hit Woolworths, killing a class of 5 kids. What is such a bummer is that it was such a strong opening that I spent so much of the book trying to figure out how the author would work this to a conclusion. When I finally let go of that need to understand where it was going, it was a touching book about the lives of these 5 very flawed, sometimes tragic, sometimes terrifying people.

One of the things I dislike in a book is when the structure becomes more important than the contents of a story. And I felt this was the case. I am always drawn to full-life stories, and these were well done, albeit there may be too many characters to focus deeply on. With the leaps in time and the switches in characters, I felt that it got in the way of what was otherwise a good story.

I will read his next work because I loved Golden Hill and was sorry that this one didn't work as well for me.

I definitely felt that the idea of an alternative history was very innovative and liked that the characters became so fleshed out and relatable at times throughout the different markers in their life. I felt that the flavor of the time periods was missing and that this would have made this book a better read. There were a few of the characters that I really related to and felt anything for and just thought maybe there was just too much to follow and keep straight. I would definitely like to read more from this author. I really liked the style of writing and just how excellent the descriptions and dialogue were. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley.

I've been a big fan of Francis Spufford's for some time. His outrageously clever RED PLENTY is one of my all-time favorites. And GOLDEN HILL IS terrific historical fiction. So, when I heard that he had a new novel on the way, and when I heard the plot details, I was excited, to say the very least.

LIGHT PERPETUAL didn't disappoint. It's a high-concept plot to imagine the lives of a group of London children killed by a V-2 rocket as if they'd instead survived the war. It's an intriguing idea, but it's easy to see how it could fall flat in the execution. But Spufford gets it just right. This is really the story of post-war Britain, told through the imagined lives of these children. It's full of wit, humor, and compassion. Each of the characters feels fully alive, and it's fun how he links their lives in unexpected ways. You can feel the affection Spufford has for these children and their lives. But he never verges into sentimentality.

Top-notch fiction. I was pleased this made the Booker Prize long list, and I hope it advances to the short list. It's an honor richly deserved.

Francis Spufford has done it again! His first novel, Golden Hill, was a tour de force of historical writing, with enough verve and bravado for two novels, not just one. In Light Perpetual he takes an entirely different tack, but rewards the reader with a series of set pieces so vivid you feel you are in the scene yourself. There’s a certain kind of writer who never makes a false step in pursuit of his or her literary goals, and Spufford is among this select few. Hard to believe anyone could start this new novel & not want to go all the way through ASAP. 5 stars!

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford centers around a singular question: what if? In 1944 a German bomb was dropped on a department store in South London, killing nearly everyone inside, including a handful of children under the age of twelve. After learning about this bombing, something tragically common during the war, Spufford asks the all-consuming question: what if the bomb had not fallen on this particular department store at this particular time? From here comes the premise of his novel, in which Spufford gives life to five of the children and writes them into adolescence, adulthood, and old age. The trajectories of each of his characters are explored within the context of a changing country in the 20th century, and readers watch them live their lives mostly in parallel to one another: falling in love, making mistakes, and growing old.

I enjoyed Light Perpetual, not least because Spufford is a talented writer. I did enjoy the second half of the book better than the first when the characters are older and more mature. In their youth I felt at times that the characters were not fully formed, which in many ways may mirror the imperfect reality that Spufford was trying to evoke.

Based on an actual event, the book begins in 1944 with the bombing of a Woolworth’s in London. Everything else in the book is imagined. The book traces the lives of 5 fictional children (Jo, Val, Ben, Vern and Alec) killed at Woolworth’s and speculates about how their lives would have turned out. That’s an interesting premise, but it turns out that the bombing was completely irrelevant and I found tying these children to a bombing was pointless. The director Michael Apted already thought of following the lives of a group of real children born in 1956 by visiting them at 7 year intervals. He didn’t need the drama of an explosion to begin his series.

The book visits each of the children in 1949, 1964, 1979, 1994 and 2009 during which period they adopt careers and form families. Really, nothing exciting happens. The children aren’t special in any way. Nevertheless, I wound up enjoying this book. I liked the author’s previous book “Golden Hill” but I thought that it elevated style over substance. It certainly elevated writing style over plot. When I started this book I was already annoyed by the whole bombing thing, and then when I realized that again there is no plot I thought “here we go again”. However, the author’s beautiful, densely descriptive writing gradually won me over. But you have to really love descriptions. The description of the operation of a printing press is clever, but goes on forever. This is about a tenth of the total description: “ But he’s not paying attention to that, having long since typed the next line, then the one after that: not paying attention, that is, except to the complex and variable symphony of noises the machine makes when going at full tilt the click-rattle-chink-chunk-scree-hiss-whirr-treadle-jangle it lays down constantly, in rhythms far more overlaid and syncopated than can be set down in linear order. A womb of mechanical noise, to be monitored with some spare fraction of a busy mind, because a variation or blockage in it could be a sign that Mama Linotype is about to squirt molten metal at your legs.”

There are very nice glimpses of a personality or situation. “... Marcus‘s solution to the indignity of being the offspring of two teachers at his own school has always been a resolute pretense that she and Claude have got nothing to do with him from the moment he goes through the gates in the morning, head high, impervious, lips together in a clamping pout of irony.”

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Imogen Church. She did a wonderful job. I am sure that I will read the author’s next book. At least now I know not to expect a plot.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Sorry to say, I struggled with Light Perpetual. The story itself was fine in itself, but the build up left me with the expectation that I was going to be reading something more along the lines of an "alternate paths" type novel. But after the opening chapter setting the premise, the story just rolled out as a fairly straightforward series of interlocking vignettes of the five lives, and I kept on waiting for something more that never arrived.

As a reader who loves stories of alternative lives, the plot immediately caught my attention. A group of shoppers at a Woolworth's in London on November 25, 1944, are suddenly incinerated including five children. Who might they have been? What lives might they have lived?

FIRST SENTENCE "The light is grey and sullen; a smoulder, a flare choking on the soot of its own burning, and leaking only a little of its power into the visible spectrum."

An extraordinary prologue describing the coming explosion in slow motion is unforgettable. Then time returns to normal and the destruction and death is revealed. From there the author constructs new lives for the children by showing the reader snapshots from the lives Alec, Vern, Ben, and sisters Val and Jo might have lived over a period of years as the world changed. Although the characters are the author's creation, the event actually took place and five children were among those who died which makes the stories all the more poignant. The reader is constantly reminded that none of these lives were lived.

Thanks to Francis Spufford, Scribner and NetGalley for a digital copy; opinions are my own.
Publication Date was May 18, 2021 #LightPerpetual #NetGalley

I love stories with alternate lifetimes.

This novel is completely unique taking a tragedy and then moving into another realm and see lives that could have been lived.

I'm 100% sure that I'm not the only person who spent most of this novel crying. This is a heart-breaking and powerful way of storytelling and I'm here for every single world.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Francis Spufford’s latest, Light Perpetual, is a mostly conventional generation-spanning narrative, albeit one with a plot twist (if something included on the dust jacket can be considered a twist). Spufford’s prose is engaging and the interiority he gives his lead characters really connects the reader with each individual story. The gimmicky twist is a little arbitrary, and, beyond some basic existential musings that are quickly dispatched after the book’s preamble, doesn’t really offer much to the overall story.

Light Perpetual follows five Brits from the 1940s up through the modern age, giving Spufford the opportunity to explore class, gender, and politics in western Europe with an appropriate amount of historicity which lends the novel some meaning. The main thrust of these five lives is that they shouldn’t exist: they were all meant to die in 1944 when a German V2 rocket crashed into south London, killing 168 people. In setting off this alternate timeline, Spufford is able to create a sense of futility and tragedy while presenting beauty in all lives, regardless of that life’s impact across time. It’s a common trope in fiction, the “what if” of historical events, and I admire Spufford’s commitment to telling a straightforward story despite its more fantastical origin.

Ultimately, readers will be drawn to this novel based on their interest in modern historical fiction. Anglophiles in particular will enjoy seeing London throughout the decades and how each character’s life intersects with the time’s politics and events. While I enjoyed the book, I often found myself questioning its overall purpose. But perhaps that is the book’s point: all lives have purpose, even if their lives don’t appear to say or represent much. There is an acknowledgement of life’s abundance in its simplicity.

Rich, lyrical, absorbing and redolent of Britain in the second half of the twentieth century, this is an outstanding work of speculative fiction. Powerfully visualized, it comes stocked with memorable characters and a mood portrait of political and social development in the post war years. Immersive and intelligent.

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

From the award winning author of Golden Hill
A mesmerising story thats full of warmth!

Francis Spufford, the award winning author, is back with another stellar novel. Light Perpetual begins in November 1944 in Lambert Street in the London Borough of Bexford. The book brings in profoundness, a warmth and beauty of experiences, touching upon how precious life is. It is the story of five lives in the bustling neighbourhoods of 20th-century London.

The Plot
Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in southeast London receive a delivery of aluminium saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Its a V-2 rocket during World War II. Among the shoppers were five young children. Who were they? What futures did they lose? The book narrates the lives of these five souls amidst the unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London.

Review
What stands out in the book is surely the evocative description of London and the period details. Extensively researched and a narrative that intimately touches upon personal experiences this book swept me away with its prose and characters. However I would like to add that such a narrative may not appeal to all types of readers. There is a possibility of the reader getting lost in certain parts as they tend to get tedious. Oodles of nostalgia, as well, marks the text.

Verdict
A compelling and though provoking read, on the whole. Go for it, is such books suit you.

Spufford has used a real event- the deaths of many in a Woolworth's bombed by the Germans in 1944- to tell a tale of individuals in post War Britain. Five children- Alec, Vern, Ben, and sisters Val and Jo-live different lives in which one or two of them periodically intersect. Alec becomes a typesetter who loses his job during the 1970s, Vern is a property developer always chasing the next best thing, Ben is mentally ill, Jo sings, and Val marries a Nazi. Each of these individuals would have been worthy of their own novel and in some ways this felt like five novellas pulled together with the opening conceit, which frankly goes on too long. Some sections of each narrative are so ornately written than my eyes glazed (what point is he making) and yet others- Ben's for example-while similarly detailed, are gorgeous. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. This takes a bit of patience for the payoff but is on balance a good read.

I have a thing for alternative life stories. Life After Life remains one of my favorites. So, I was drawn to Light Perpetual, especially since I enjoyed Spufford’s Golden Hill.
The story starts in 1944 London. A crowd has gathered at a department store to see a new shipment of pots and pans. When, boom! A German V-2 rocket hits the store and everyone is obliterated. The story then tracks what would have been the lives of the five children there with their mothers. We get to see them move through what would have been their lives, watching how the personalities first glimpsed in grammar school develop.
The chapters are vignettes of their lives, with large gaps of time between. And what we’re seeing isn’t just these five lives. Spufford is showing us the changing times of the 20th century. One of the strengths of this book lies in the descriptions of time and place. He also shows us it’s not just these lives lost but the future generations that were lost.
The book is beautifully written. Small bits, like Jo teaching her students to sing harmony, just grabbed me. This is a book that’s meant to be savored.
I hadn’t realized that the rocket that took out the department store was real and 158 people actually were killed.
My thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for an advance copy of this book.

I’m sure this is probably a good book but I just couldn’t get into the writing style. I may try to come back to it at another time.

For me, reading Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual, was a strange juggling act. On the one hand, the premise of the book got me thinking about all the millions of lives that might have been if they hadn’t ended because of World War II. Where would we be if those millions had been able to finish their fourscore years and ten? On the other, I needed to stay focused on the rather ordinary lives of the protagonists who—in one version of history—were killed by a V-2 rocket. The juggling act made me constantly question Spufford’s choices. Why these five people? What are we to learn from seeing scenes from their possible lives over the decades? Is there a lesson to be learned from a book that always prances away from stating its message?

One day in 1944, a V-2 rocket landed in Bexford and killed several people. Or it didn’t. Spufford takes us down the path that might have been if Jo, Val, Ben, Alec, and Vern has survived. Sisters Jo and Val go down their own roads. Val becomes enthralled by a violent man. Jo resolutely does not get too entangled with men, instead becoming a singer and songwriter who never quite makes it. Alec marries young and works as a compositor for The Times before technology makes his job obsolete. Ben lives the kind of marginal life that often befalls people with severe mental illness. Vern is an unscrupulous wheeler-dealer with a deep love for opera. The lives of these five characters diverge after school, apart from one brief, accidental meeting between Vern and Alec. Only two things seem to connect the five apart from their near/actual death by V-2. First, they all eventually end up back in Bexford, London. Second, they all have a propensity for getting lost in moments. Sometimes, it’s a perfect moment of light in the middle of a soccer match. Other times, it’s a wonderful moment of musical beauty. Yet others, it’s a horrible moment of inescapable violence.

So what are we to learn from these five? One idea that struck me partway through Light Perpetual is that, of the many millions who died during World War II and the Holocaust, most of them (statistically speaking) were ordinary people. Like the characters of Light Perpetual, most of the dead would probably never have left home. Many would have followed their parents’ professions. Many of them would have tried to make it big and fails. A smaller number would have had to deal with mental illness. Sure, there would have been artists, scientists, writers, geniuses, and people who would have changed the world. Most of the lost were ordinary—but that definitely doesn’t mean that their deaths don’t diminish the rest of the world. If anyone asks me what Light Perpetual is about, this is probably what I would say. But I also have another answer, one that is literally ephemeral. Over and over, we see characters getting lost in the moment. And what is life, after all, but a series of moments that later become memories? Spufford gives this quintet of dead/alive people their moments back.

I don’t know if I liked Light Perpetual. I certainly found it interesting. But I also found it frustrating because it never really resolved to my satisfaction; it just kept going in narrative-convention-defying directions. This isn’t to say I disliked the novel or that I think it’s a bad novel. Light Perpetual, rather, is unusual, thoughtful, occasionally profound, and often poignant. This is definitely a book for readers who like their historical or literary fiction intelligent and unconventional.

Lux Aeterna.

In the 1980s, I sang in masterworks choirs. We performed requiems, including those by Verdi and Mozart. "May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord, with thy saints in eternity, for thou art merciful. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them." The lux aeterna was always emotional, the grieving's hope that the afterlife compensates for the suffering of living.

This past year, millions have mourned victims of the pandemic. We have lost the very old and we have lost those whose life was yet to be lived. As someone who is nearing my seventh decade, I felt my vulnerability. I considered last things and the value of the life I have lived and the possibilities for the days that may be granted to me. At this time, reading Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford had special meaning and especially affected me.

In 1944, a rocket hit a Woolworth's and killed 168 people, including 15 children. This real event inspired Light Perpetual.

Spufford begins his novel with an amazing description of a bomb exploding.
And then, Spufford imagines the lives of five, fictional, children who died in the explosion, jumping 15 years at a time through their lives.

They are ordinary people living ordinary lives, with the ordinary sorrows and joys of being human. They are flawed people. Some try to do their best, while the actions of others are harmful and destructive. Their lives are just one thing after another, problem after problem.

Like ordinary people, their lives can be boring. Like ordinary people, they have fears and unfulfilled dreams. And, like ordinary people, they are here, and in the blink of an eye, they are gone. Into the light. Become dust.

It all seems accidental, how life works out. And not the way we had planned, or hoped. And then, we run out of options. We have lived our lives.

And yet. And yet. As one character faces death, he has peace and he is able to praise God for all the mundane beauty of this world. It inspired me to tears.

What a miracle life is--how we waste it! Let us praise those moments when the sunlight breaks through the clouds and warms our face and the birds are singing and someone holds our hand. Let us remember those who are gone and pray they find light perpetual.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The conceit here is that five children are killed in a WWII bombing in England, and the author imagines an alternate future for them. It’s not a bad setup but the book fails to deliver. It is chronically overwritten, and the five characters that are the backbone of the story are simply not interesting. Unfortunately I would not recommend this one.

LIGHT PERPETUAL: DNF ⭐️

I found this INCREDIBLY hard to get through and eventually just gave up because I didn’t care a lick about what happened. Maybe this is one of those reads that one has to be in the right place in life to really ‘get’ and I am so not there yet. I’ll probably try it again in a few years or so.

NOTE: I was provided an arc in exchange for an honest review. Thanks Netgalley and Scribner!

WHAT IF...

Once in a while you read a book that is original in plot and prose. Maybe this one is the experiment. Perpetual Light shines its nimble radiance on fiction with a extensive storyline connected to history.

It is 1944. Customers are at Woolworth’s in London eager to see new saucepans made from aluminum. It is wartime and no one has seen anything new like that in a long time. Before reaching out to touch them, they lose their sight. A bomb was detonated and its warhead contained 910 kilos of amatol. I had never heard of amatol before but then I never wanted to study deadly bombs.

The structure of the novel is unique, to say the least. This Woolworth bombing is a true story, 168 people were killed, including five children. It is from the five children that Spufford creates his novel, five working-class children who are fictionalized. He follows them from 1949, 1964, 1979, 1994 and 2009 – “visiting” them every fifteen years. In this make-believe afterlife, the reader just needs to remember that none of these moments happened. I became disoriented at times, but it was well worth the off-balance moments to read an extraordinary novel.

We follow these five children into their unpredictable lives. The author’s originality is interesting and it also gives him power to create an extension after this deadly explosion. But we know it’s not reality; they did not survive the bombing. It’s hard not to believe that none of this aftermath occurred. Joining history with a fictional outcome could be consequential. Spufford is talented enough to move us along inasmuch I believed these children were growing up.

My gratitude to NetGalley and Scribner for this pre-published copy. All opinions expressed are my own.