The five protagonists of Francis Spufford’s latest novel, Light Perpetual – Jo, Val, Vern, Alec and Ben – are all born in London around 1940. However, in 1944, these four-year-olds are looking at a new delivery of saucepans in Woolworths with their mothers when a German V2 bomb hits the store, incinerating them all immediately. Jo, Val, Vern, Alec and Ben are never going to hit or miss life ‘milestones’, or ‘transition’ into adolescence, adulthood or old age, because they are all dead. Here, Spufford steps in. He tells us what would have happened to these five people if they hadn’t been killed during the Second World War, jumping forwards in satisfyingly untidy intervals of time all the way up to 2009. For a while, I kept asking – and I think it’s a reasonable question – why did these people have to die in the first place? Spufford isn’t interested in playing with alternative timelines, at least not explicitly, so why not just trace their lives normally, without the interruption of a German bomb? However, by the end of the novel, I came to realise that its opening pages (slightly pretentious as their prose might be) are essential to Spufford’s project. None of the five protagonists change the course of history; the loss of these lives meant both nothing, and everything.

As with Golden Hill, Spufford’s research is impeccable (and here I’m in a much better position to judge than I was with Golden Hill, because I’m a historian of post-war Britain). He shows how all five protagonists are restrained by class and gender and yet how their lives take them to places we might not have expected when we first properly meet them in a run-down primary school in Halstead Road. Musical, synaesthetic Jo becomes the temporary girlfriend of a rock star in America. Vern builds and loses several business empires. Val becomes mixed up with the fascist racism of the British Movement in the late 1970s. Ben and Alec’s lives seem most tied to their class destinies, in Alec’s case perhaps partly because of the way he sees class struggle; going into a ‘trade for life’ at the printworks, he faces his skills being made obsolete by digitisation. Meanwhile, Ben is also eventually phased out as a bus conductor but struggles terrifyingly in the meantime with schizophrenia, in a fragment that is one of the most immersive and horrific things I’ve ever read about mental illness.

Light Perpetual is, notably, not that concerned with the dreams and promise of youth. More than three-quarters of the novel takes place after the protagonists are thirty-nine. This hugely refreshing choice pulls Spufford away both from the obsessions of the original cohort studies – what percentage get married? who is socially mobile? – and the concerns of most fiction of this kind, which, even if it follows the protagonists through their lives, tends to linger on the twenties and thirties and then race towards old age. It gives him space to explore how our lives still change, transform, explode or implode, even once we are seen as ‘middle-aged’. It feels like he’s telling us that we’re not always going to be defined by choices that felt so important when we were young. And as the characters get older, the book gets ever more beautiful and moving (yes, I cried a couple of times). I noted in my review of Golden Hill that Spufford seemed to have been influenced by George Eliot; here, it’s blatant. Eliot famously wrote in Middlemarch that ‘If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence’. Here’s Spufford’s reinvention, through the eyes of Alec, who was possibly my favourite character:

'You couldn’t walk up a rush hour street, negotiate a bus queue, sit in a theatre, if you were constantly aware of the millionfold press of beings as entire and complicated as yourself… He’s still blundering among over-noticed faces when he boards his eastbound train, still ringed around as he sits down with his briefcase on his knee by eyes universally bright and significant because they are all of them the windows through which single souls are looking out.'

Riffing off such a famous passage is a pretty hard thing to get away with, but Spufford pulls it off here because he earns it. Golden Hill was brilliantly clever and thoughtful, but Light Perpetual is even better. It tells us that we are all important – even when we’re actually horrible, like Vern, or believe we’re horrible, like Ben – and that we’re all worth something. And somehow it does this, unlike most novels which try it, without ever being sentimental or obvious. What a book.

I will start by saying that this is a very well written book, with some very interesting fictional stories around the main characters, spanning across seven decades. However, I was slightly apprehensive at first if I would make it through the whole book as it is a bit of a 'slow burner' at the beginning. The first chapter gives us a very detailed description of five children in a Woolworths in London 1944, whose lives are sadly ended abruptly by a V2 German rocket. This very first chapter is written in such a way that it really slows down the event, and you can very much visualise the rocket hitting the building and the catastrophic effect it has. The five children who we are briefly introduced to here are Ben, Vern, Alec and Jo and her sister Val. It is a shame we are introduced to the main characters in this way, as I felt it then really takes a few chapters to get an impression of who these individuals are and to begin to empathise and identify with any of them. The book then follows these five children through their lives, almost as a 'sliding doors' situation, IF the bomb hadn't hit where and when it did and these children had been allowed to live their lives. The book is written in five sections; 1949, 1964, 1979, 1994 and 2009, and we learn from each of the parts how the characters lives have developed over these periods of time. Some of the events the characters find themselves mixed up with, reflects some of the political issues and trends happening during a particular time, written with some great description of places, people and events, really giving you a real sense of what is occurring and reflecting a particular period. The first instalment of their lives, 1949, describes the children at school during a 'Hymn Practice' session. However, I felt we don't really get a sense of each of the characters personalities or anything of complete relevance until much later in the book. It is this element of the book for me which made reading the book slow at first and didn't really grip me as a reader, until later on in the book as I began to understand the structure of the book and know more about the characters. Whilst this book pays tribute to the many lives lost in the bombing of 1944, some who were innocent children robbed of their lives, I feel it may have been more powerful for this message to come through if the author had chosen to reference this at the end, and remind us as the readers that these lives never existed because of a tragedy of war, and the fact such tragedies still exist through warfare across the world today. For me, the book just mainly became a narrative of five people across their lifetimes, some overlapping in parts and highlighting some political events, and really missed addressing the premise that these children had their lives taken away from them so innocently and tragically. If you can get through the first few chapters, and can overlook some of the issues I mentioned, then I'm sure you'll find it a most interesting read. My thanks go out to netgalley and Faber UK for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this.

During the blitz a bomb hits Woolworths in (the imagined) London borough of Bexford, killing all those within its path, including 5 small children. Light Perpetual is the incredible imagined tale of those 5 lives, if they had each lived their life.

We join our 5 protagonists at 5 points in their lives. In the early years, we need to get reacquainted with each of them every time we meet. But as the years and the layers pass, the depth of backstory for each character brings a familiarity and a warmth. Superficially each leads a fairly mundane life but has an extraordinary thread to pick up and move forward.

Light Perpetual has received magnificent reviews and they are absolutely deserved.

Thanks to Faber and Netgalley for an ARC.

High in concept, but more traditional in delivery than I perhaps expected, Light Perpetual is a really rather moving study of a group of children from the point where they escape death in a V2 attack that doesn’t happen through to the end of their lives, checking back in with the characters every ten years or so, tracking the upturns and downturns in life like a novelised version of the 7up documentary series.

In all honesty, I expected a little more from the “parallel world” aspect of the survival of the children at the start - history changing events perhaps. That’s not what’s on offer here and is all the better for it; it’s in the minutiae of relationships, the little decisions that mount up over the years, the gambles lost and won, and the struggles with mental health or abusive relationships...

Very enjoyable, but I wonder if I missed some of the deeper religious underpinning (perhaps spiritual, rather than religious?). Anyway, a minor point

This is Francis Spufford's second novel but the first one for me.

Light Perpetual is a time lapse story which dips in and out of the lives of five children from one class at a London primary school.

It follows them through the highs and lows as their lives play out against the backdrop of the last fifty years of UK history.

Spufford's wonderful descriptive passage bring the characters to life.

This is a great read and I thoroughly reccommend it!

Light Perpetual begins with the bombing of Woolworths in 1944 killing, amongst many others, five young children in an instant. One second in time is changed and the bomb never happened, Alex, Jo, Val, Ben and Vern grow up and experience all the changes and challenges of the rest of the twentieth century.

I really enjoyed this book right from the beginning, it is a clever observation of five normal lives and I liked how the author entwined these characters into a variety of different events and eras as they moved through the years. Ultimately, none of these children grow up to have lived extraordinary lives, but as each constantly navigates their way over personal hurdles (relationships, mental health, financial struggles, unemployment, parenthood, drug abuse, violence) and their characters evolved throughout the book, they were almost unrecognisable from the children they had once been. It is a brilliant portrayal of the ordinary human life, full of hope and courage that no matter what life throws at us, we will be ok.

Light Perpetual begins in 1944 with the fatal bombing of a Woolworths store in Bexford. Amongst those killed were five children: sisters, Jo and Val; Ben; Alec and Vern. Obliterated in less than a second. But what if they had been elsewhere at the time of the bombing? Light Perpetual takes us on a journey with these five individuals in an imagining of how their lives may have turned out. Full of pathos and grief, successes and epic failures, each story is exquisitely sketched. My particular favourite was Ben and I thought the portrayal of his battle with mental ill health was written with such insight, removing any semblance of stigma and giving such a wonderful sense of hope.

Every character had depth, and demons, and this book really was a testament to the human spirit, to resilience and to courage.

Absolutely gorgeous and meaningful in so many ways, I can't recommend this wonderful book enough.

Also available at: http://readingandwatchingtheworld.home.blog/2021/01/26/review-no-133-light-perpetual-by-francis-spufford-uk/

Review no 133: Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford (UK)

(I read Francis Spufford’s much-anticipated new novel Light Perpetual this month via #NetGalley.)

In the novels’s opening chapter, t+0: 1944, the narrative details an imagined rocket attack in chilling, slow-motion detail, as it strikes and instantly kills five children, out shopping in South London on an ordinary Saturday with their families: five-year-olds Alec, Vern, Ben and twins Jo and Val. The vivid unspooling of the catastrophe brought to mind the opening story in Mark Haddon’s powerful short story The Pier Falls in its sense of dispassionate inevitability.

“It cannot be run backwards, to summon the dust to rise, any more than you can stir milk back out of tea. Once sundered, forever sundered. Once scattered, forever scattered. It’s irreversible.”

Nevertheless, fiction does have the power to rewind time, and Spufford recreates a future for his tragically snuffed-out characters. This deeply humane novel conjures those children up with the incantatory “Come, other chances. Come, unsounded deep. Come, undivided light. Come, dust.”

We skip forward in time by five years, and the children – untouched – are now 10. We learn things about these normal working class children that will stay with them throughout their lives: whether it’s a love of music, a keen intelligence, or a searing sensitivity.

We revisit Alec, Vern, Ben, Jo and Val at intervals, a bit like the ’60s TV series 7 Up, as we watch the ways their lives diverge, their sadnesses and successes, their bad and good decisions, and the way those decisions influence the course of their lives, however outwardly mundane they may be.

The evocation of each decade of the latter part of the 20th century is a feat of pastiche, which, if it occasionally lapses into cliché, is counterpointed by its pinpoint accuracy.

I found sensitive Ben most vividly drawn, diagnosed at a young age with schizophrenia, whose nightmare years are balanced by a period of domestic contentment. This part of the book gives value to the notion of perseverance through the darkest of times, in the hope of a brighter future: and although it could easily seem trite, Ben’s story is so well-handled that it feels genuinely wise and hopeful.

This a deeply humane novel, with light a reoccurring motif, and with a whiff of benevolent religiosity. However, the prose is spiritual rather than hectoring, and at its best both illuminating and luminous. The book opens with the words “the light” – in that case the terrifying, destructive light of the murderous rocket attack – and it closes, too, with light: “The grass grows bright with ordinary light … and the light is very good“.

With its opening pages awash with wish fulfilment and second chances, there are obvious thematic parallels with Kate Atkinson’s instant classic Life after Life, as well as Ian McEwan’s canon-fodder Atonement, but Light Perpetual is far from derivative and easily holds its ground next to those two novels.

In 1944 a V-2 rocket killed 168 people in a branch of Woolworths on New Cross Road in London; 15 of the dead were younger than 11. Light Perpetual does not attempt to unearth or reimagine the histories or thwarted futures of those real children, but the author acknowledges that the novel is “partly written in memory of those South London children, and their lost chance to experience the rest of the twentieth century“.

Frances Spufford has written one previous, extremely well-received novel, the multi-prize-winning work of historical fiction Golden Hill, as well as some diverse works of non-fiction: The Child that Books Built (about his childhood love of reading), Unapologetic (about his Christian faith) and Red Plenty (about the USSR in the 1950s). This new work may be his best yet.

a stunning and experimental novel of lives not lived - he just can bend a genre and get away with it - I've read his work before, and it is always mind-blowing and convincing - a group is bombed but we read about them as if they grew up anyway - and so the stakes are different, and this influences how we judge their actions, good and bad - what kind of people we think they are, and their plot choices - at first I heaved a sigh of irritation at what I thought would be contrived story and characters - but, no - you are utterly engaged and care a lot. highly recommend ... I am sort of gushing here ...

This is one of the most enjoyable books I have read in a long time, such beautiful writing of a truly imaginative story telling the story of the development of five young lives spared from death to develop into adulthood. The writing is just superb, this is a book to be savoured with each character going through the complex development of fragile humans. A great book, I know you will enjoy it immensely.

A wonderful follow up to award winning novel. Poignant look at unrealised life of young children obliterated by a wartime bomb. As usual Spuford interweaves delicate prose, fine storytelling and great characters. Loved it. Thank you NG for allowing me to read an advance copy,

This was a great book, that reminded me strongly of Kate Atkinson's Life After Life and A God in Ruins. It starts during a WWII bomb attack that kills (among others) five children in a fictional London area called Bexford, then "drops in" on each character's possible future life. Each of the characters is brilliantly well-drawn, and often quite hard to like, but seeing where they have come from really fleshes out their decisions and actions. It also (sometimes subtly, sometimes less so) comments on the changes in society over the years, particularly in regards to race and class, particularly worker's rights.

he apprenticeship of a linotype compositor, union workers and the newspaper strikes of the 70s are full of detail, which only makes it sadder as we see the inevitable decline of print. The unlikable property developer/ wide boy character, who starts up his business by fleecing a trusting young footballer, then makes and loses millions over the decades, exploiting gentrification.

There are so many themes running through the book, from ska bands and racism, to teaching, watching generations grow, and relationship mistakes. I enjoyed the contrasting rise and fall in different times of the different lives, and was pleased to see an examination of mental illness that included the possibility of getting better.

It sounds fairly heavy, and was very well written and poetic in some places, but was actually enthralling and a real page turner. One to make you appreciate your own life, wherever you are.

Either despite or because of the fact that Light Perpetual ignores a lot of given wisdom in the literary world and breaks many of the rules which the intelligentsia set for each other, let alone us plebs, it is one of the best books I have reviewed in the past few years and I am quite selective about what I request from Net Galley for review.

None of the five principal characters is presented as a hate figure (or as someone to be mocked) at any point, even though they all get involved in bad scenes and two of them would, in any intelligentsia-compliant novel, be text-book examples of very stupid people doing bad things: one becomes an unrepentant property developer, the other falls in love with and marries a man she knows to be a violent wide-boy who then becomes a skinhead and a leading figure in the neo-fascist “British Movement.” Such evil isn’t hidden, denied or excused but neither is it judged on political reflexes or nostrums. And, believe me, the author doesn’t shrink from making his evil shocking.

Other characters take a decade or more to recover from setbacks (which is how it actually is in the real world: I know this) and even then they fail to make everything perfect for themselves and their loved ones.

This book also contains the only sermon I have read in the past decade or two by a fictional black evangelical preacher, which is not a parody or a self-vindicating declaration of anti-Christian bias dressed up as reportage. It is a plain good sermon and whilst I would not expect to hear it from a Roman Catholic or Anglican priest of any trendiness level whatsoever, it is genuinely theologically sound. The author is disposed to show black evangelical preachers as they are, and not as it is fashionable to perceive them. And I grew up as a white boy with a beloved Jamaican “Auntie” taking me along to meet quite a few of the breed.

Lastly, this novel breaks the rules by being about salvation by Grace rather than by conformity with either social-political theory or laws.

Thanks to Faber for letting me read an advance copy of Light Perpetual. After adoring Francis Spufford's debut novel Golden Hill, I knew I couldn't pass up the opportunity to read his next book. It's inspired by the V2 bombing of a Woolworths in New Cross in 1944, and the children who were killed during that raid. What if the bomb had dropped somewhere else? What would those children have gone on to do throughout the course of the 20th century?
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I love the premise of this, especially once I discovered it was inspired by a real bombing. The book follows five children over a series of time skips, as they grow up and become adults - Jo (musically talented), Val (always chasing after boys), Vern (selfish and manipulative), Ben (plagued by mental health troubles) and Alec, my personal fave, who is clever and socialist and, as a child, always winding people up. I suppose I wish more was made of the premise of 'what could have been' and 'what actually happened', in the land of the novel, and it was a bit strange that all the story took place in the fictional London borough of Bexford, also in the southeast. It was also a bit too abstract for me at times, and I definitely didn't like it as much as Golden Hill. But what this book does deliver is a thoughtful, immersive, very atmospheric trip through 20th-century London in the eyes of five working-class south Londoners. The endings were particularly poignant, but I really liked how strong each of the settings and lives were, and how much I managed to gain just from a quick glimpse into someone's life. 4 🌟

Having enjoyed "Golden Hill" by Francis Spufford, I was keen to read "Light Perpetual". This is one of those "what if" stories, in this case, "what if the V2 rocket hadn't crashed into Woolworths in 1944". It follows a number of young children who would have died and checks in with them at certain points throughout their lives, a bit like the Up series. It does take a bit of getting used to, switching between the characters and you slowly begin to see how their lives pan out. All varied lives, all varied at different times of their lives too. A lovely snap shot of "what if".

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford, for me, was a first time read by this author and I was unsure of what to expect.

Initially, the description caught my attention and was curious to the contents. However, I knew immediately this book was not for me but I persevered. The writing is excellent with beautiful descriptions in each line. I also enjoyed the humour and emotional weave throughout the whole novel. My instincts told me this novel was not for me but I would recommend to readers of Francis Spufford who enjoy his writing.

I give a 3-star rating only as the book was not for me.

I WANT TO THANK NETGALLEY FOR THE OPPORTUNITY OF READING AN ADVANCED COPY OF THIS BOOK IN RETURN FOR AN HONEST REVIEW

I read and enjoyed the author's previous novel Golden Hill a number of years ago, so I was looking forward to reading another Francis Spufford book. Light Perpetual has quite a different feel from Golden Hill, but is equally readable and interesting.

The central conceit of this book is that five children are killed in a WW2 rocket attack on a Woolworths in south London and their young lives are vaporised. But then the author imagines what their lives would have been like throughout the second half of the 20th century had they lived. I believe the author based this idea on a real tragedy that happened in the war, but that places and names were fictionalised to avoid taking liberties with the real victims.

Each of the subjects was clearly, distinctly and sympathetically drawn, even when they did horrendous things such as becoming involved in far-right violence or swindling people. The book was a real insight into 20th century UK history and changing social attitudes for me. A recommended read.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

Glorious writing. I loved the innate humanity of each of the characters - their ‘second chance’ didn’t convey happy ever after, or that they’d live good or tidy lives. Really enjoyed this.

I'm always very hit or miss when it comes to literary fiction and unfortunately for me, this was a miss! The concept sounded so intriguing and I was instantly intrigued to read it and I really wanted to love it but it just didn't hit home for me. This is a reimagining of what a group of characters lives could have been like had they not died in an explosion as children but with this happening at the very beginning of the book I had no time to get attached to any of the characters maybe if the explosion was revealed at the end after spending the time getting invested it may have struck home for me better. This book is basically all about the characters but I just didn't care about any of them I enjoyed finding out what they were getting up to at each stage but I didn't care about what actually happened to them. One thing I liked was how it portrayed different people at the same stage in life living completely different lives with completely different problems showing how not everyone travels through life at the same pace. All in all just not for me but I'm sure some other people will absolutely love it.

I wasn't sure, in the grey dullness of a January lockdown, that my brain could absorb any literary fiction. If any time calls for a diet of Heyer, Ibbotsen and some childhood favourites this is it. But having loved On Golden Hill and intrigued by the premise I'd asked for an eArc so thought I should try and fire my brain up. I needn't have worried, literary it may be but it's hugely readable, I was instantly absorbed by the perfect prose into this unique book, which has maybe a hint of Kate Atkinson's superlative Life after Life in its premise of lives not lived.

The book's springboard is a tragedy. In the Second World War a V2 rocket bomb hit a Woolworths in New Cross and kills everyone inside and around, a total of 168. The Woolworths had received a rare supply of saucepans and shoppers had flocked there to buy them. Spufford imagines five children who died there (not based on the many real children who sadly did die) and the lives they would had if they hadn't been wiped out in less than a second. Vernon, stolid child of black marketers who remains greedy, grasping and sly but has a profound and unexpected love of opera, Ben, nervous and plagued by terrible mental health, Alec, too bright for his situation in life and twins Val and Jo, the first slipping away from responsiblity and towards criminality, the other who sees colours in music. We visit them at points throughout their lives, 5 years after the bomb went off, twenty years and so on.

In some ways this is more like a collection of novellas or long short stories, with moments of connectivity. The five don't grow up to change the world, they don't solve hunger or cure cancer. their absence won't change the axis of the future. But the lives they live are full and the connections they make, good and bad, are real and meaningful. As Alec notices in his last chapter: 'Alec has one of those moments where you see that the crowd is composed of, is nothing but, individual after individual after individual. The city granulates. He's seeing the leaves not the foliage, the trees not the forest, the spill of separate crystals not the bag of sugar.' Light Perpetual takes a tragedy and shines a light on the individuals through what might have been. Some of the five are more likeable than the others, some grow and change, others stay fixed in their childhood moould, but all feel desperately alive. I admit to tears when I reached the end of Ben's story.

Spufford is a superlative writer who enfolds his formidable research seamlessly into the text. Beautiful descriptions of long replaced printing presses, a day on a standard bus route in the 1970s, an impatient psychiatric unit in the 1960s, a fight between mods and rockers on Brighton seafront all as clear as if he were giving an eye witness account. Light Perpetual is the kind of book that enriches your mind so gently you barely notice. It deserves to win every literary prize going.