I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review, thank you to NetGalley, Faber & Faber, and the author Francis Spufford.
I am really torn by this novel. The first half of the book I found interminably slow moving and quite dry, however in the second half there were chapters and sections that flew by and were incredibly engaging.
Without a doubt, some of the character's stories were more involving than others, and it does require some perseverance to get to the point where the story picks up pace.
Some more emphasis and focus on the story that 'could have been' with the V2 rocket would have made the reader more involved and engaged in the subsequent 'what if' narratives. For this reason, 3 stars.

I was given a copy of Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This novel behind in world war 2, when I bomb is dropped. It goes on to follow what would have happened to the victims had they have survived. I struggled to get into this book, it wasn't for me.

Amazing and brilliant story based on a great what-if.
I loved the style of writing and I think that author is a great storyteller. He delivers great characters and a fascinating story.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Highly readable with an intriguing set of characters who we visit a various stages in their lives, picking up their stories every fifteen years from childhood to old age. Some characters were not very likeable, and some you were rooting for an hoping for their happiness. I didn't really think the starting premise of bomb in Woolworth and what would have happened if it had missed was actually necessary as it would have worked well enough without it.

I desperately wanted to love this book, a book of what ifs and what could be - a cross between Sliding Doors and Life After Life, but, for me, it just didn't quite hit the mark. As the book went on I did warm to the main characters - the five that survived when they otherwise shouldn't have, and by the end I was interested to know what happened and I was very pleased that Vern got something verging on comeuppance, but I think I expected more of the 'what if' in each of the stories.

I am a big fan of Francis Spufford's writing, Golden Hill being one of my favourite novels, so I was pretty excited to see he was publishing a new novel, and Light Perpetual did not disappoint. I think every time a child dies you are left with a host of "what if's", in Light Perpetual he reinvents the lives of 5 children killed in the blitz. Following them through 15 year intervals he proves his premise that every life is exceptional in some way.

I was a big fan of Spufford’s debut novel, Golden Hill, and was really looking forward to his follow-up. While I loved the premise here, the execution didn’t live up to my expectations. I’d heard a bit more about the genesis of the novel from seeing him speak at the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature last month. He got the idea on his frequent walks to his teaching job at Goldsmiths College in London. A plaque on an Iceland supermarket he passes commemorates a World War II bombing that killed 15 children in what was then a Woolworths. He decided to commit an act of “literary resurrection” – but through five imaginary people in a made-up, working-class South London location. The idea was to mediate between time and eternity: “All lives are remarkable and exceptional if you look at them up close,” he said. The opening bombing scene is delivered in extreme slow motion and then the book jumps on in 15-year intervals, in a reminder of scale.

I read about the first 90 pages and skimmed the rest. My problem was that these particular characters don’t seem worth spending time with; their narratives don’t connect up tightly, as I imagined they might, and they feel somewhat derivative, serving only as ways of introducing issues (e.g. mental illness, sexual assault, racial violence, eating disorders) and trying out different time periods. The writing is good – that goes without saying – but I wasn’t convinced that each of these stories was anything more than an experiment in ventriloquism (the slang/regional accents, for instance, are kind of cringe-worthy). Jo’s time as a rocker in LA was reminiscent of Daisy Jones and the Six; Alec is a journalist and union man who doesn’t get along with his son; Vern is a would-be property tycoon; Val turns her own trauma into compassion as she fields phone calls for the Samaritans.

When I saw Spufford as part of the online festival, he read a passage from the end of the book where Ben, a bus conductor who fell in love with a Nigerian woman who took him to her Pentecostal Church, is lying in a hospice bed. It contains a beautiful litany of “Praise him” statements, a panorama of everyday life: “Praise him at food banks,” etc. It made for a very moving moment. Ben’s story of drug addiction and mental illness was the most worthwhile for me; I would have gladly taken a whole novel about him, rather than this somewhat fragmented narrative about arbitrarily spared people.

Opening in 1944 this book begins with 5 children being atomised by a rocket. But what would have happened had it been diverted? What lives might have been led by those children? Moving through the 20th Century, from school days through to old age, we follow the protagonists in a parallel universe where their lives were not obliterated. Very moving and highly involving, this is a tremendous book.

An engrossing book, and a fascinating journey through post war history. The idea behind the book is very clever, and the author really makes us think about all the lives that never were as a result of the war. An excellent book, which I will definitely recommend.

Very powerful and intense imagining of the lives of 5 children had they not died in a bombing of a Woolworths in 1944. We see only snapshots of their lives at 15 year intervals but each snapshot is a vivid picture of that character and what it feels like to be in their head as well as sketching in the social history of post-war Britain. I loved it.

What a great writer is Francis Spufford!
Three books of his I have read, and each is entirely different from the other, yet none of them could have been written by any other author:

'Unapologetic' – not simply an apologetic treatise but a book of intellectual considerations of the validity of the Christian faith and how it can make sense to a (post)modern individual;
'Golden Hill' – not simply an historical novel but a perfectly realised image of life at the inception of New York and yet told like an old-fashioned rollicking good 18th century novel;
and now, 'Light Perpetual' – not just a sci-fi/alternate-reality/family saga(!) linking events through time but a consideration of time and its effects and how our perception of it is affected by events and how we are treated; by love and our experience of it; by faith and natural converse, doubt. Essentially, what it means to be given the gift of being alive and what that gift itself actually means; as Spufford says, there aren’t any ordinary lives, and his belief in this truth is made abundantly clear throughout the book.

From first glance at the blurb 'Light Perpetual' may sound similar to a few books of recent years. Indeed stories of potential or lost lives regained is certainly not new, but this is really a very different proposition and in substance bears little resemblance to virtually any other book I can recall. It can on occasion not be the easiest of reads and (despite the novel’s central conceit) is perfectly conceived and utterly believable in the structure and seeming randomness of the protagonists’ lives. But ultimately, and most important, it reflects real life, decisions and outcomes, in a way that is fresh and sometimes shocking but ultimately uplifting and always searching for hope. What more could you want from a novel at this time of grief, lament, and pain?

I have waited a while to write my review of Light Perpetual to see how long its events and characters stayed with me. They have. There's lots to enjoy here. In its concentration on a single, invented part of London (Bexford), from which none of the central characters depart for long, makes it seem like a beautifully written soap to some extent, but Spufford's feel for both London and its history since WW2 is too assured for that to be a problem. The writing is a little too purple for its own good at some points (e.g. the opening description of the bomb and the opera scene), but this is being picky. A very good, almost great, London novel.

I really wanted to give this book 5 stars because it is mostly a work of literary genius. It is the sort of book that if I was going to write a novel, I would want to achieve something as original, poetic and with the majestic impact Light Perpetual has. The opening chapter describing the atomisation of a ten thousandth of a second in time is jaw dropping and breath-takingly stunning. It is an opening I will never forget because it is beautiful, terrifying, powerful and so cleverly written. It immediately captures the reader's attention, arrests the mind and from thereonin you have no choice but to surrender to the wonder of Time itself and the intelligent way Spufford has portrayed alternative lives for the 5 children whose young worlds end in one bomb blast in Woolworths, in Bexford High Street, November 1944.
The reason I could not award 5 stars was because in some parts I felt many readers could be lost if they do not share the passions the author himself does. Extensively researched or intimately known through personal lived experience, there are moments when some of the prose is a bit heavy going. This won't appeal to everyone. I was mostly simply swept away by the enormity of time and how the characters' imagined lives could have developed, however there was one notable section, about music, which even I found a little tedious. Sorry!
The headings of the chapters show time as a very simple mathematical equation and the last heading and very last line of the book was perfect in my opinion, finishing the novel as powerfully as it started.
There is plenty of nostalgia, lots of references to particular things found in certain decades that took me back and although I have never lived in London and very rarely visited the capital city, I could appreciate a social commentary which made landmarks of key events into a sort of political history.
A constant turning, spiralling, spinning world where perpetial motion can lead to any destination at any point in time, Light Perpetual is a book I am so very grateful to have read and one I highly recommend to others.
Thanks goes to the author, publisher, Pigeonhole and Netgalley for providing the opportunity to read a novel I so very nearly glanced away from.
4.5 stars.

Light Perpetual is a wonderful book that takes us on a journey of the alternative lives of five southeast London children. Alec, Ben, Vernon, Jo and Val are all queueing in Woolworths when a German bomb hits. This first chapter about the bomb dropping was stunning. I didn’t think I could read pretty much a whole chapter about the way that a bomb impacts and then explodes AND enjoy it - but it was mesmerising. Then, something changes, and it’s as if the bomb never happens. We are taken on an alternative future, alternative lives for the five children. It’s as if the bomb had never dropped. Life goes on, and these five young children are able to live their lives as teenagers, adults, and in to old age. And what varied lives they lead. Not only do we see what becomes of them, but we experience a significant chunk of the twentieth century with all of the huge changes and the impact on the people that lived through these times.

I loved everything about this book, and I can’t believe that I haven’t read any Francis Spufford before. I shall have to rectify that. In the meantime, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this - it’s just my kind of book.
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole for helping me out with my NetGalley list once again (it happens a lot!), and to Francis Spufford for reading along with us.

Whilst an engaging read into social history, I felt I couldn't really get into each character's story in depth and would be constantly reminding myself who was who as it flicked between characters.
The first chapter almost seemed pointless, and didn't even really need to be there.

“Come, other future. Come, mercy not manifest in time; come knowledge not obtainable in time. Come, other chances. Come, unsounded deep. Come, undivided light. Come dust.” - ‘t + 0: 1944, Light Perpetual’.

My thanks to Faber & Faber for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Light Perpetual’ by Francis Spufford. I also took part in a group read, hosted by The Pigeonhole, which allowed for a close reading of this work of literary fiction. We were joined by the author, who responded to questions and provided background information on the novel.

The novel opens in November 1944 as a German V2 rocket hits a Woolworth store in the fictional borough of Bedford in South London. Among the lives snuffed out that day are five children: Jo and Valerie and Alec and Ben and Vernon are simply gone. Yet what if it were possible to resurrect them and let them experience the changes of the twentieth century and to live out their personal triumphs and disasters?

In ‘Light Perpetual’ Francis Spufford allows them these lives. The narrative jumps forward from 1944 to 1949, 1964, 1979, 1994, and finally to 2009, following the lives of these five children as they grow to adulthood and beyond.

I thought Francis Spufford’s writing was excellent and I found myself often stunned by this powerful narrative that brought these lives and periods in British history so vividly to life. They are snapshots across time but well crafted ones.

The first chapter in which the bomb hits is astonishing as time is slowed down second to second in order to chronicle the explosion and then time is rewound to create a different outcome.

Though all five lives were memorable in different ways, I was especially moved by Ben’s struggles with mental illness. While it was unsettling reading, it highlighted the challenges faced by those with such a diagnosis. Throughout the novel there was an ongoing theme of coming to terms with choices made and mortality.

The novel was inspired by a real event in 1944 when a V2 rocket hit the Woolworths in New Cross Road, South London and 15 children were among the 168 killed. While the children in the novel are invented souls, Francis Spufford has invested them with another kind of life.

After such a positive experience, I plan to read his first novel, ‘Golden Hill’ as well as look out for news of future projects.

Given its fascinating premise, the themes addressed, and quality of writing, I feel that this novel will be of interest to reading groups as aside from these qualities it is a novel likely to provide plenty of material for discussion.

Highly recommended.

i absolutely loved this book, such a clever idea and although there are several characters and it jumps about between them .. i had no trouble following their stories. Such a clever way of depicting the post war years in this country. An unputdownable read. thanks you.

Light Perpetual starts with a second by second exploration of the launch and explosion of a V2 bomb in war time London. Hundreds of people are killed. It is one of the most spellbinding first chapters I have ever read. You steady yourself for aftermath and grief. Then, as novelists can, he plucks five children from the wreckage and tells the story of the lives that they would have led.

It sounds like a great plot, but it really misses the opportunity here. So, what happens if the five children do not get killed in the bomb blast? Well, they go on to have fairly ordinary and mostly dysfunctional lives, the end. In the meantime the detail and meandering that goes nowhere makes you think there is a point to it, but there isn't.

I initially wasn't sure about this book. The story follows 5 children that were killed in a bomb through the 20th century that they missed out on (not a spoiler as it's in the blurb and page 1 of the book). As a 'what could have been' type novel I don't think it works. Perhaps if the bomb had been a reveal later on it might have done, or if we'd seen the world with and without them. Having read The Vanishing Half and The Midnight Library recently that did this extremely well, I felt it didn't compare.

However, I did find myself really enjoying it hence the 4 stars. The writing style is wonderful as is the nostalgia. Having lived in London and through some of the later eras mentioned it was lovely, and not in a twee way either - the good and the bad is all in here.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and author for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.