‘Something else…and something else again…’

The author vaporises his five central characters, all young working-class children, in a V2 bomb attack on south London in the opening pages of the novel. Then he resurrects them in a ‘what if’ scenario which removes the bomb attack and spares the children to live out a normal life span. But what is ‘normal’?

Twins Val and Jo, one seeking rough companionship, the other musically talented, Alec, clever but impetuous, Vern the bully whose heart is melted by opera, and gentle Ben afflicted with mental and emotional problems see their lives uncoil and, in some cases unravel through the Twentieth and early Twenty First centuries. Being spared the bomb is simply a road not taken; early promise thwarted, wrong decision making, lack of confidence, overconfidence, health issues, luck - sometimes good, often bad – all draw the reader’s emotional response. We know that choosing a career as a typeset worker for a newspaper in the 1970s is not a good idea, or that investing in property before a crash will be a successful venture, but the reader, like the author, has the advantage of hindsight. Just like the audience at a Greek Tragedy, we can see the inevitability of disaster and can do nothing to stop it coming. If the bomb does not hit you, then life will.

Francis Spufford writes his immensely moving novel in bravura style. He is a master of words and their employment. In On Golden Hill he began with a sailing ship arriving in New York harbour, zig-zagging back and forth like an example of Zeno’s paradox, which logically proves you can never arrive at a destination, as at every point on a given journey, the traveller must cross a half way point…ad infinitum. In the opening chapter of Light Perpetual, he employs the same paradox, this time the journey is of the V2 bomb constantly halving its distance to its target, slowing the narrative right down to slow motion, before the inevitable impact. For the sheer versatility of his writing alone, this novel is a joy to read, but the humanity and sympathy of its story raises it to a yet higher firmament.

A great new novel from Francis Spufford. I enjoyed the following the different characters along their paths through the 20th into the 21st century. I loved how the imaginary 'Bexford' was a character of its own, also developing throughout the decades. A very enjoyable read!

Light Perpetual is an engaging book following the lives of five main protagonists. The hand of fate and the consequence of decisions, non-action etc is crafted well by Spufford and feels very realistic with a keen sense of place. The warts and all focus on everyday 'normal' characters is refreshing and the inclusion of distinctly unlikable protagonists is well judged.

The premise of a 'life reboot' / 'what if' scenario where a bomb never lands on the Bexford Woolworths is for me slightly redundant as removing this initial section has no significant impact on your enjoyment of the book. in conclusion, the exploration of everyday lives lived through all their ups and downstairs though well honed is nothing I haven't read before.

A beautifully written novel about the lives of children who, at the beginning of the book, are killed by a bomb. Spufford then goes on to create their lives had the bomb not fallen. This is my first novel by Spufford despite hearing people rave about his previous novel, but I will soon remedy that.

Francis Spufford makes a bold move at the beginning of this impressive novel. In the first few pages, he kills off the five main characters. The year is 1944 and the protagonists are children, shopping in a London Woolworths with their parents, when a German bomb obliterates the building and everyone in it. One minute they exist, the next they do not. Spufford then imagines what their lives would have been like had the explosion never happened, visiting the characters at 15-year intervals.

Two of the five are twin sisters, Val and Jo. Val is obsessed with boys when we first meet her, and they are the cause of much strife throughout her existence. Jo displays a love of music at school and this becomes one of her main purposes in life. Vernon's greed manifests in his eventual role as a ruthless property developer, though he shows glimpses of humanity through his fondness for opera. Alec is the class clown, a mischievous fellow whose gifts of persuasion earn him a job as a typesetter. And troubled, delicate Ben tackles some mental difficulties before taking up a position as a bus conductor.

I thought of Kate Atkinson's work while reading this book, specifically the wartime efforts of Life After Life and A God in Ruins. Spufford exhibits a similar level of enterprise in this novel, submitting the idea that it's a miracle we're here at all, and giving his story so much heart with its authentic, believable characters. We follow their triumphs and setbacks throughout the years, and marvel at the fact that lives could have been lived so fully, when they could so easily have been snuffed out before they had properly begun.

I was a huge fan of Spufford's previous novel, Golden Hill, and while this latest work didn't thrill me in the same way, it left me with a lot more to ponder. Themes like the nature of time, what constitutes a happy life, the impact one individual can have on a multitude are all examined with a grace and clarity that showcase this author's unique talents. It's a brilliant, ambitious book and the unanimous praise being showered upon it is completely deserved.

Favourite Quotes:

"The bride and groom are sitting up at the top end, she in cream silk with eyelashes the size of escaped caterpillars, he hollow-eyed and the worse for wear from his stag night, but both grinning helplessly, the way you do; both shining with the astonishment of being, themselves, this moment, standing on the magic pivot, the trampoline of transformation, where your life is being changed and for once you know it. Right then, right there, as you feel the dizzy hilarious bliss of it, the change is underway."

"Chance, that she came back to London, chance that she met Claude, chance that she taught for twenty years at Bexford Hill. How can this be her life, how can that be her love, if it rests on such accidents? Surely her real life is still waiting to happen."

"Nobody chooses who they love. Possessing something, being somebody, loving anyone, it rules the rest out, and so it’s quieter than being young, and looking forward, and expecting it all, that’s all. The world calms down when your choice is made."

"It’s that she chafes, secretly, like this; that she is finding, just now, when things are hard, how sharply it seems she can still regret the lives not had, the music never recorded, the fame not gained. Old sorrows she thought were long worked through– no, more than that, which she thought were actually abolished by her having had different desires fulfilled– turn out to be still capable, still bitter, able like ghosts to billow up and start talking, if given a drop of blood to feed upon."

"People say the world gets smaller when you’re dying: but there it still is, as astonishingly much of it as ever. It’s you who shrinks. Or you who can grasp the world less, who can take hold of less and less of it, until you’re only peeping at one burning-bright corner of the whole immense fabric. And then not even that."

I was smitten with the idea of this story as soon as I saw it. There have been times in my life, I have wondered where I would be if I had a different path in life.


In the opening chapter, a series of events has put five young lives, besides others, in a Woolworths store in Bexley. The War in Europe is still going strong with bombs dropped in populated areas are a regular payback.
Five children are in the local Woolworths with their mothers, when a V2 bomb hits the store, killing them instantly. The author explains the effects of the bomb, depending on where someone would be on impact, which put things into perspective.

The story stops there. The five lives are over, but it goes on to show what their lives would have been like if the bomb had missed them. The five children are revisited through the story for one day each every fifteen years right through their lives. Their lives cross each other both in school and beyond.


The five characters are very different and face challenges that history will put in front of them. They face trends, expectations, choices of career and partners, they become husbands, wives and partners, have or don’t have children, and grandchildren. They have good fortune and ruin and still cross each other lives even when they are older. They influence others and people live and die because of them. It is a fascinating story.

I wish to thank Net Galley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book which I have reviewed honestly.

The Light Perpetual begins in a very dramatic fashion with a German rocket hurtling towards a branch of Woolworths in the fictional London borough of Bexford on a Saturday lunchtime in 1944. As it obliterates the shop and its surroundings, it also destroys the lives of many people, amongst them five children called Jo, Val, Alex, Vinnie and Ben. The premise of Francis Spufford’s novel is “What if it didn’t?”. What if the rocket missed its target and those five children went on to live happy and fulfilling (or miserable and pointless) lives?

Moving on through the book we meet the five main characters at various stages of their lives – children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged and elderly - making their way through the complex cultural, political and social changes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Although the (non) event at the beginning of the book isn’t mentioned again, its shadow hangs over the storyline in the sense that many of the people of that generation didn’t make it through the war and there’s an invisible pressure on those that did to live a good life and make something of themselves. However, they are only human and are prone to all the usual foibles and failures that affect us all. This isn’t an alternative reality story - none of them go on to find a cure for cancer or prevent the shooting of JFK. In fact they mostly live very ordinary (bordering on dull at times) lives. But the characters themselves are very relatable and distinctly drawn – I always knew whose story I was reading, which is not always the case in all books which feature a number of protagonists.

Francis Spufford was inspired to write the novel after seeing a memorial in London to the victims of a V2 attack on a branch of Woolworths, in which 168 people, including 15 young children, died. It has a very different feel to it than his award-winning debut novel, Golden Hill, which was a much more humorous and light-hearted historical read. I loved Golden Hill and I have to admit that I was a little disappointed at first that this wasn't more of the same, however for me this one really worked as an examination of the lives which the characters were allowed to live thanks to a quirk of fate.

In the end I enjoyed Light Perpetual a lot, but I did have my reservations – especially about the beginning. The narrative consists of snapshots of the lives which five children might have lived if they hadn’t been killed in an air-raid in 1944. 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, with increasing intervals between vignettes, into their seventies.

Frankly, I hated the beginning so much that I very nearly abandoned the book altogether. It is verbose, self-regardingly pretentious and in the end wholly irrelevant to the subsequent development of the book. I’m glad I persisted, though, because this subsides so I did become very involved with the characters’ lives and found Spufford’s analysis of their characters and the background events very shrewd much of the time. There is a fine line between really good, inventive writing and pretentious showing-off; Spufford begins on the wrong side of that line by a long way, in my view, but later I found the book readable, involving and with some important things to say. There are stories of opportunities missed and taken, of second chances and of the sort of unexpected turns that lives may take. I found some passages quite remarkably evocative, like the experience of being in hospital drugged on largactyl in the 60s or of the hateful, vicious bigotry of the far right in the 70s for example. Even though I think Spufford does stray into show-off territory sometimes, as a whole I found this a very rewarding novel.

So, not perfect but enjoyable and thoughtful in spite of its flaws. Recommended.

(My thanks to Faber & Faber for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford begins during the Second World War, it’s 1944 and bombs are being dropped on London. One of these bombs is about to end the lives of many people including a number of children - Ben, Alec, sisters Jo and Valerie and Vernon all in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Later in the book we learn that the author based this on New Cross Woolworths which was bombed claiming 168 lives.
The novel considers what would have happened if the bomb hadn’t killed those children, what lives would they have led? And so we follow the lives of these children growing up in the 20th century. We drop in and out their lives firstly in 1949 then in 1964 and so on. We see them live through the 60’s, 70’s etc. Through their lives the novel considers the changes in society and relives many moments in history such as the industrial disputes in the printing industry as Murdoch sacked the print workers and moved production from Fleet Street to Wapping. We see Alec intelligent and socialist in his views, whilst the Thatcherite Vern is a less likeable character. The far right, countered by the rise of the anti nazi league, is highlighted by Valeries relationship with a far right racist. With Ben the novel considers mental illness.
With these five parallel lives the book captures the changes taking place in the 20th century and how it shapes the lives of those individuals and their families.
This is a superb book covering so much ground that I thoroughly enjoyed and would highly recommend.

I rather enjoyed Life After Life by Kate Atkinson and so was intrigued to read this. The first chapter is completely unlike the rest and the following chapters following the characters goes to show how human they all are. There's no 'proper' happy ending for anyone, or that's how I felt. They all appeared to be happy in their own way and dealt with struggles along the way. An intriguing and well-written book.

I loved Francis Spufford’s first book, Golden Hill and was intrigued by the premise of Light Perpetual. The opening chapter is certainly powerful – dare I say, explosive – describing the obliteration by a Nazi V2 rocket of a Woolworths store, and all the people in it, into fragments of atoms in a mere fragment of time. It was disappointing then, only a few chapters in, to realize the novel was becoming a bit of a slog. Not so much “light perpetual” as “book perpetual”, I found myself thinking.

I think one reason is the episodic nature of the book’s structure as the reader catches up with each character relatively briefly with longer and longer intervals between visits. Sometimes, the timing seemed more designed to coincide with some social change the author wanted to explore, such as the industrial unrest in Fleet Street at the end of the 1970s or the property boom of the 1990s. At one point I even considered not continuing with the book – not something I do very often – but in the end I did persevere.

I found myself questioning whether I actually cared much about the five characters whose lives the book follows. For example, I couldn’t find much in the way of sympathy for Vern who pursues a relentlessly selfish life, albeit showing the resilience to recover from a number of setbacks along the way. It seemed fitting when he is finally confronted by the victim of one of his business ‘opportunities’.

My favourite character was probably Jo, who seemed to come nearest achieving her potential in the life the author imagines for her. Even so that still means her musical talent goes unrecognised in an industry dominated by men. Choosing to sacrifice the career she might have had because of family commitments, notably supporting her sister Val’s poor life choices, Jo observes, “This is an accident. There is no need for her life to have worked out like this at all. So many other possibilities.”

I think it was this observation that helped me “get” what the author was trying to do. Even more so when I read the acknowledgements at the end of the book in which he explains the story was inspired by a plaque commemorating those killed in a V2 attack on the New Cross Road branch of Woolworths in 1944. Effectively, Light Perpetual is the author’s memorial to the children who died that day and who, in his words, “lost their chance to experience the rest of the twentieth century”.

Although I may had issues with some elements of the book, I couldn’t fault the quality of the writing. To borrow a musical metaphor, the book includes some virtuoso solos. For example, the episode in which bus conductor Ben struggles to gain control over his dark and tortured thoughts, or Jo’s whole class singing lesson which neatly echoes a scene from the beginning of the book. I also liked Alec’s observations about the mass of individuals he sees in a crowded Underground carriage. ‘Every single one of these people homeward bound, like him, to different homes which are to each the one and only home, or else outward bound, to different destinations at which each will find themselves, as ever, the protagonist of the story. Every single one the centre of the world, around whom others revolve and events assemble.’

And I appreciated some of the subtle touches towards the end of the book, as the characters reach old age, that suggest the memory of the event that might have killed them but didn’t still persists in some form. For example, Ben’s feeling that, “Sometimes everything seems to be shaking to pieces, idea from idea, bone from bone, matter all flying apart into a broken heap, and then he thinks he can hear a huge sound, a rattling rolling crash he has somehow been living inside”. Or, glimpsing the former site of Woolworths from the bus, Jo’s sensation that the building is “flickering in and out of existence”.

The book is not the literary equivalent of the film It’s A Wonderful Life where you discover what would have been missing from the world had the children not been killed in the rocket attack. It’s more akin to the TV documentary series that started with 7Up showing how social and technological changes have affected the way people live. Overall, Light Perpetual is a book I admired rather than loved.

Like 7-Up in book form, or a broader The Years, Light Perpetual offers potential lives to five children who died in the (real) V2 bombing of New Cross and a history of late 20th century London. The title derives from the Christian prayer "Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord: and let light perpetual shine upon them. May they rest in peace" and knowing that I think highlights Spufford's profound love for his characters.

The two issues at the centre of the book is "why this life and not the other?" and that every historical movement is made up of individuals, "every single one the centre of the world, around whom others revolve and events assemble”. Several of the characters muse towards the end, as they reach their 70s in 2009, how lives solidify around temporary decisions, while seemingly permanent ones like career and marriages are come to an end and start again.

Like all of Spufford's books, Light Perpetual is warm and intimate and expansive all at once. His characters are full of believable life and it is the readers desire to spend time with them as they grow old, rather than plot, which makes this a gripping read.

“How can loss be measured, how can loss be known except laying this absence, now and onwards, against some other version of the reel of time, where might-be and could-be and would-be still may be?”

I do not read fiction that often, and modern fiction even less so - but even still, this book left me moved. It is presented as a what-if - what if a bomb had not wiped out a building during WW2, what if they all had lived? The book gives us glimpses, snapshots of lives across the decades, taking us from their school days to their late adulthood. Perhaps part of my delight in this novel was that much of it is based in a fictional part of South London, which is so often ignored in novels compared to the more fashionable North, East and West!

The book is titled Light Perpetual, a reference to the traditional prayer for the departed, and the language of light, and the characters attention to it is a common theme throughout the text. Even a few weeks after reading I am not entirely sure if this is simply a matter of poetic styling, or perhaps it is part of the characters momentary recognition that the world they occupy is, in fact, a fantasy. It is tempting to ask whether the tragedies that be beset the lives of the characters - all different, some likeable, some not, all very human - are due to their cheating of fate – “a thread of unhappiness, tightening inside him, a faint signal, growing stronger, that something is wrong” - or whether this would have been their lot in any case.

The importance of decisions and the paths taken and not taken is a recurrent theme, each glimpse we get of the characters illuminates the later direction of their lives. One of the most poignant glimpses we get is that of a character with sudden onset schizophrenia - or did he merely suddenly understand that he was supposed to have died decades before? The fragility of youth and the weight of time passing grow, as does the slow limitation of the choices we have in life, as our decisions and mistakes have inevitable consequences. As the novel progresses, we see the characters move from their youth to watching some their children begin to make their own mistakes - and be entirely helpless to stop them - and veer off and begin to write their own stories of which the older generation will only play a minor part.

I will not lie, the final chapters with the wedding reception, and then the hospice, reduced me to the tears. A beautiful, thoughtful book, which I thoroughly commend. (I can also easily see it as a BBC TV series one day…)

Award-winning author Spufford returns with a mesmerizing and boldly inventive novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London. Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in southeast London receives a delivery of aluminum 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. Among the shoppers were five young children.

Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the life arcs of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs, disasters; of second chances and redemption.

This is a captivating, richly-imagined and immersive piece of historical fiction that perfectly evokes time and place through exquisite descriptions and wondrous prose. It explores the beauty of life through actions, opportunities and feelings we often take for granted and reminds us of the fleeting impermanence of our lives but also the miracle that we are even living at all. Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory and expectation, and the preciousness of life. Highly recommended.

I read the blurb and I think I was expecting and hoping for something like Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life but this book was nothing like that. The concept was clever and you can’t complain it wasn’t descriptive enough but I didn’t feel any connection with the characters and the whole thing seemed more like shortish stories.

Initially quite confusing with fictional stories around the main characters spanning several decades, however I stuck with it and found it to be a well written book with very clever observations of human life.
My thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I loved Spufford's first novel and, while this isn't quite as good, it is nevertheless excellent. I loved the conceit of following the unlived lives of those who died in the bombing and seeing the counterfactual alternative played out.

I really struggled with this one to start with. I found the flick from person to person and times extremely confusing. Once I stuck with it though I found it a good read. One to read when you have the time to savour it.

I feel like this fell so flat, the concept really drew me to this as one of those 'books I wish I'd written' but the execution wasn't up to much. The characters didn't feel developed enough and I couldn't get a sense of their personalities until the end, It felt like more of a tale of their circumstances rather than them.

I was interested in this firstly, because the blurb talks about a moment in time, a change in perspective and a ‘what if’ scenario, which I am a sucker for. It felt like it aligned with Kate Atkinson’s “Life After Life”, in that it was set in the war amid bombs and London in the Blitz, and concerned a higher (or at least a different) outcome being sought.

Spurred on my seeing this book pop up in a few different posts and reviews for book reviewers I follow on Instagram, it leapt to the top of my reading pile.

I am glad it did, I really enjoyed it! Firstly, it’s not an easy read, as we follow this five five-year-old children who escape the deadly bomb blast that obliterates them all on a different timeline. Ben, Vernon, Alec, Jo and Val are all in the same inner city school, together in the first chapter and apart for the rest.

From here the narrative jumps forward by 5, 10 or 15 years each time, presenting a kind of fictional, written, 7UP. If you haven’t seen these programmes, I recommend them – every 7 years, documentary makers visit a set of children chosen for their diversity in class and social standing, and essentially you watch them grow up on screen. I think the last one is 56UP, so they’re all in their early sixties.

In the same way, we catch up with the group at various points in their lives as they get married, move country, get admitted to a psychiatric hospital, bump into each other, get jobs and so on. I worried at first that I’d forget their names, that I’d mix up their stories or not be able to follow along, and that didn’t happen at all for me, it’s really clearly written.

It’s also an interesting concept that explores some key themes – music follows the characters through their lives as they start in a singing lesson at school, and then go on to opera and session musicians and the noise of the street outside, or in their own head. Noise features a lot, along with the light. Light slices through curtains, a lack of it shrouds things in the dark, it signifies a breakthrough.

I’d also say that the blurb isn’t quite right, there are six main characters, not five. London itself is the sixth. Marching across the landscape in skyscrapers, or looming large as the backdrop for punk/NF clashes in the street, it’s the ever present. Even when it’s not there, someone in the story is missing being there or talking about going back. It made me want to visit the borough they’re from, so much so that it was a surprise at the end to find out that it doesn’t exist in real life!

If I had any criticism of it, it’s that the two female characters don’t seem to get quite as much ‘air time’ as the rest, and as twin sisters their stories are intertwined so they don’t get individual stories either, really. It would have been good to hear more from their perspective, but on the other hand, there are plenty of female characters in the other stories too.

I liked that they were ordinary lives, out from underneath the shadow of the Blitz. They flirted, and drank and danced, had dreams and wishes that sometime came true and they were glad and sometimes did, and they regretted it. While I didn’t actually like many of the characters, I grew fond of them and wanted to know what happened to them next.

Thanks to Netgalley, as always, and to Faber & Faber for the DRC! You can buy Light Perpetual from February 4th 2021.