Light Perpetual
Author: Francis Spufford
Published by: Faber & Faber
Pages: 327
Format: Hardback
My Rating ★★★1/2
Published by: Faber & Faber
Pages: 327
Format: Hardback
My Rating ★★★1/2
November 1944, A German rocket strikes London and five young lives are atomised in an instant.
November 1944, and that rocket never lands. A single second time is altered, and five young lives go on – to experience all the unimaginable changes of the twentieth century.
Because maybe there are always other futures. Other chances.
November 1944.
Jo and Valerie, Alec and Ben and Vernon are gone.
But what if they had lived?
November 1944, and that rocket never lands. A single second time is altered, and five young lives go on – to experience all the unimaginable changes of the twentieth century.
Because maybe there are always other futures. Other chances.
November 1944.
Jo and Valerie, Alec and Ben and Vernon are gone.
But what if they had lived?
My thoughts:
The novel opens with a bold and detailed description of the bomb itself exploding. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children. These five young victims of the wartime bomb are resurrected by the author, imagining the life arcs of these children.
This unusually constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, and the narrative consists of snapshots of the lives which the five children might have lived if they hadn’t been killed in the air-raid in 1944. Who were they? What futures did they lose?
In the opening explosion scene, there is a cheerful style to the writing that is in complete contrast to the appalling devastation it describes. It is immediately very engaging, and I enjoyed Spufford’s distinctive tone.
The author follows his five characters for a day each in 1949, 1964, 1979, 1994 and 2009. The story leaps 15 years at a stretch, leading us through history.
It is, in effect, both a sort of social history of London and also a set of character studies as Francis Spufford develops his protagonists through childhood, the formative years of early adulthood and then eventually, into their seventies.
The book is essentially, an incredibly in depth and interesting character study, which will leave readers questioning the meaning and value of life.
The novel gives each child a voice and place in the ever-changing social and political life of 20th century Britain. We follow their love, dreams, failures and simply their lives, and explore the impacts of the changes in the world around them. However, perhaps it was the very ordinariness of the characters that didn’t grip me quite as much as I’d expected. Nevertheless, itt is a story full of warmth and beauty, and an intimate celebration of life. I'd describe it not so much a novel as a set of interweaving short stories. It’s a stellar concept, and while I loved the premise here, the execution didn’t totally live up to my expectations. I never really got the sense that we were trying to remember the fact that everything could have been so different. I found that as the characters got older, they did get a bit more interesting - but to be honest, I found most of them quite dull a lot of the time.
Even though Light Perpetual wasn’t what I was expecting going in, overall I enjoyed it anyway.
Overall reaction:
The novel opens with a bold and detailed description of the bomb itself exploding. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children. These five young victims of the wartime bomb are resurrected by the author, imagining the life arcs of these children.
This unusually constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, and the narrative consists of snapshots of the lives which the five children might have lived if they hadn’t been killed in the air-raid in 1944. Who were they? What futures did they lose?
In the opening explosion scene, there is a cheerful style to the writing that is in complete contrast to the appalling devastation it describes. It is immediately very engaging, and I enjoyed Spufford’s distinctive tone.
The author follows his five characters for a day each in 1949, 1964, 1979, 1994 and 2009. The story leaps 15 years at a stretch, leading us through history.
It is, in effect, both a sort of social history of London and also a set of character studies as Francis Spufford develops his protagonists through childhood, the formative years of early adulthood and then eventually, into their seventies.
The book is essentially, an incredibly in depth and interesting character study, which will leave readers questioning the meaning and value of life.
The novel gives each child a voice and place in the ever-changing social and political life of 20th century Britain. We follow their love, dreams, failures and simply their lives, and explore the impacts of the changes in the world around them. However, perhaps it was the very ordinariness of the characters that didn’t grip me quite as much as I’d expected. Nevertheless, itt is a story full of warmth and beauty, and an intimate celebration of life. I'd describe it not so much a novel as a set of interweaving short stories. It’s a stellar concept, and while I loved the premise here, the execution didn’t totally live up to my expectations. I never really got the sense that we were trying to remember the fact that everything could have been so different. I found that as the characters got older, they did get a bit more interesting - but to be honest, I found most of them quite dull a lot of the time.
Even though Light Perpetual wasn’t what I was expecting going in, overall I enjoyed it anyway.
Overall reaction: