"An idea is in his head, the mercury consenting to be chased slowly to a standstill. Who knows if it’s true. But if the different bits and pieces of his life, rising, lofted as if by a bubble of force from below, are arranged in a messy spiral of hours and years, then mightn’t it be the case, mightn’t there be a place, mightn’t there be an angle, from which you could see the whole accidental mass composing, just from that angle, into some momentary order you could never have noticed at the time? Mightn’t there be a line of sight, not ours, from which the seeming cloud of debris of our days, no more in order than (say) the shredded particles riding the wavefront of an explosion, prove to align? "

This book starts after Atkinson but soon goes all Apted.

Francis Spufford has explained the real-life incident which lead to this book – a V2 rocket attack on a branch of Woolworths in New Cross in 1944 while killed 168 including many young children – and the idea he had of imagining a similar attack (in a fictional South London borough – Bexford) but then imagining an alternate future where the attack did not happen – and then following the course of the lives of the five dead children at 15 year intervals from 1949 to 2009 (following each character for a day) – as a way also of plotting London history over that time.

The publisher when it announced it had won the rights to the book said – in what serves as an excellent introduction to the book’s five key characters:

November 1944. A German rocket incinerates a south London household-goods store, and five young lives are atomised in an instant. Jo and Valerie and Alec and Ben and Vernon are gone. But what if it were possible to resurrect them – to let them experience the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the 20th century; to live out all the personal triumphs and disasters, the second chances and redemptions denied them? What kind of future would there be for clever, impulsive Alec? What would happen to Val in the world of men, beckoning beyond her all-female household? What would become of Vern’s greed – and his helplessness in the face of song? Would light or darkness fill Ben’s fragile mind? And where would Jo go, with the music playing in her head?"

The biggest problem with the book – is that this concept rather than adding to the book by adding an intriguing element to it – seems to distract from what is in essence a finely told novel.

The author I think could have gone several ways with the concept – and chose none of them. The first was to effectively run an alternate course of history – one or more of the children making a profound impact on history: I understand and respect why he did not do this - the aim of the book is to celebrate the ordinary as remarkable, to identify that any life cut short closes a world of possibilities for that person and their family. The second was I think to write a story but with a subtle “butterfly effect” so that overtime, without any obvious explanation, the world diverged from our own – I think here the author very much wanted to write about the real post war history of London so this would not have worked. A third, and perhaps what I had assumed, was more of a Kate Atkinson style playing with the idea of fate – either with repeated choices and forks of outcome, or with more of an unveiling revelation about what we are reading. I think this could have been done in a way which served the author's purpose and added a poignancy to the novel.

Instead the concept – other than a very brief passage at the end where one character has a sudden moment when passing the building which used to house the local Woolworths- is largely forgotten and really becomes irrelevant to the story. As an example – the very basic characters of the five as set out in the publishers blurb are not revealed at all in the opening chapter but instead in the 1949 chapter as four of them are at school together and one at a Millwall match.

It is very hard not to conclude that the book would not have worked more genuinely if it had been represented as what it actually is: a story of five post-war schoolchildren and how their lives diverged (and occasionally intersected) in ways whose basic foundations were, in many cases, established in their childhood – something which is examined by revisiting them at regular intervals (a little like the 7-up, 14-up etc television series – the producer of who died in the month before this book was published – January 2021).

Because putting all that to one side – we do have a fascinating book and an fascinating history of London (and more broadly English) post-war society.

Vernon mixes a life long love of opera with a lifetime of rather shady property development (taking in council house sales, the London property boom, the Global Financial crisis and my favourite scene which covers both a catered dinner at Glyndebourne with the Lloyd’s crisis). Jo – whose synesthesia seems to somewhat fade – initially escapes London and her life of domesticity for a West Coast US lifestyle, only to be drawn back by the fate of Val who finds herself irresistibly drawn to a mod leader turned skinhead and racist agitator. Alec takes us through the print unions, the Thatcher counter-revolution and later to the world of school deregulation (and a reminder of mental illness in the 21st Century). And the most profound story is of Ben – with the most challenging scenes two of mental illness (one in and one out of hospital) as well as a tremendously uplifting one of a brief period of family contentment and a peaceful ending.

The author has talked of his Costa, RSL Ondaatje and Desmond Elliot Prize winning debut novel “Golden Hill” as a “brocade-embroidered waistcoat” – and this by contrast as a “Formica table” – and I think that is a little misleading: some of the novel is very down to earth – there is for example a lengthy examination of washing up – but some, particularly towards the end of the 2009 sections, is very descriptive, almost to the point of overwriting.

And for me, perhaps no surprise given some of the author’s non-fiction writings, the most refreshing part of the book was its positive attitude towards the consolation of religion – something in which both troubled souls in the book – Ben and Val find some sense of peace and support respectively.

"Praise him in all the postcodes, thinks Ben. Praise him on the commuter trains: praise him upon the drum and bass. Praise him at the Ritz: praise him in the piss-stained doorways. Praise him in nail bars: praise him with beard oil. Praise him in toddler groups: praise him at food banks. Praise him in the parks and playgrounds: praise him down in the Tube station at midnight. Praise him with doner kebabs: praise him with Michelin stars. Praise him on pirate radio: praise him on LBC and Capital: praise him at Broadcasting House. Praise him at Poundland: praise him at Harvey Nichols. Praise him among the trafficked and exploited: praise him in hipster coffee houses. Praise him in the industrial estates: praise him in leather bars. Praise him on the dancefloors: praise him on the sickbeds. Praise him in the high court of Parliament: praise him in the prisons and crack houses. Praise him at Pride: praise him at Carnival: praise him at Millwall and West Ham, Arsenal and Chelsea and Spurs. Praise him at Eid: praise him at High Mass: praise him on Shabbat: praise him in the gospel choirs. Praise him, all who hope: praise him, all who fear: praise him, all who dream: praise him, all who remember. Praise him in trouble. Praise him in joy. Let everything that has breath, give praise"

I'm afraid this book wasn't what I was expecting it to be. I almost didn't finish it. Not that there's anything wrong with it at all, I just was expecting something different.

In November 1944 a V2 bomb landed on the New Cross Branch of Woolworths, killing 168 people: of these, 15 were 11 years old or under. This book imagines what life would be like for 5 children had they survived.

The imagined children are Ben, Vern, Alec, Jo and Val. The book follows their lives in intervals, describing what is going on in them, pros and cons. As with all people, there are some that aren’t likeable and some you are instantly drawn to. I felt for gentle Ben, whose mind played tricks on him in the worst possible way, depriving him of a positive life for so long, where he was just going through the motions. Val and Jo were twins but also so different by their natures, Val carefree and careless, with Jo taking on more than she should have from a young age. I found I really wanted to find out what happened in their lives. Alec was definitely of the period, a man who needed to be a provider, prepared to work for the things he felt he needed to provide, first for himself then his growing family. Vern was a bully initially, then, again of his time, someone prepared to do anything, legal or not, to get what he wanted. These two I couldn’t engage with, but still wanted to see what hand life dealt for them. None of the lives are special, they didn’t change the world, but they did change and shape the people around them. A nicely observed book, thought provoking too. I don’t know that I enjoyed ii, but I’m glad I read it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

"Light Perpetual" is the literary equivalent of the TV documentary series “7 Up”, which shows the lives of children through successive years, warts and all.

A generational ‘what if’ that takes the heart-crushing cost of a solitary, horrendous event with an immense power to erase five children’s lives and presents us with an alternative – of unwritten futures over decades yet to pass, had they not found themselves in the wrong place and the wrong time.

In short it’s all that was lost VS what might have been.

You might be asking yourself what is the point of drawing such a cruel hypothesis, especially as this story stems from a real tragedy. By sensitively creating fictional characters, and allowing their personalities and relationships to sink or swim, the author demonstrates the infinite possibilities that time affords us all.

The transformation of these young lives over an extended period did weigh a little heavy on occasion. But the time jumps were fluid, and every high and low is a tribute to what it truly means to be alive.

*** ACTUAL RATING: 3.5 / 5 ***

This is a beautifully written story and the first I have read by this author. It starts with a bomb going off in a. Woolworths store in a London street which kills everyone instantly. The book then follows the lives of Ben, Alec, Jo, Val and Vern, five children who died in the bombing as the author explores what could have been. It is a wonderful novel that reminded me of Life after Life by Kate Atkinson. I would highly recommend it.



Jo Alec, Ben Vern and Val

As I read an ARC of Light Perpetual on a cold and dark January morning, with news of yet another lockdown, I wished that it’s publication could be moved forward by a couple of weeks to right now. I found it such an uplifting read and wanted more people to be able to read it right now, we need all the uplifting we can get. Still, it will be published soon and while many fans of Golden Hill will no doubt have it on order already, I urge everyone in need of cheering up to read it.

It’s not so much that Light Perpetual is a joyful book, after all, it deals with a ‘what if’ scenario, taking as its starting point a V2 rocket that exploded in 1944 destroying Woolworths in London’s New Cross and killing 168 people, including 11 children. Francis Spufford explores the lives 5 of these children could have led, giving them back their ‘lost chance to experience the rest of twentieth century’. He visits their lives at intervals of 15 years, right up to 2009 and he doesn’t make it particularly easy for them. Coming from a working class South East London neighbourhood (imaginary borough of ‘Bexford’), some have to deal with mental health issues, others with fascist boyfriends and all with big societal and cultural changes such as late 70s strikes and financial booms and busts. Yet the book has a big heart and is full of compassion. It also offers wonderful snapshots of London over the decades, the city is almost a character itself. And perhaps at a different time, I might have found Light Perpetual a little too sentimental but this cold January during yet another lockdown and with the pandemic raging, it just felt right.

Highly recommended. My thanks to Netgalley and Faber and Faber for the opportunity to read Light Perpetual.

This was my first experience of Francis Spufford. I had seen a lot of praise for Golden Hill but not read it myself, so when I saw Light Perpetual on NetGalley, I decided it was a good opportunity to try his work. My thanks to the publisher for an ARC provided that way.

I find myself very conflicted at the end of Light Perpetual. There are several things about the book that I really enjoyed and several that I found aggravating and that rather spoiled my experience of the book. Hopefully, both those views will become clearer over the next few paragraphs.

The first chapter of Light Perpetual is explained in the book’s blurb: London, 1944 and a V2 bomb explodes when it hits a Woolworth’s store and instantly kills the shoppers in it, including five young children. As the blurb goes on to say, Light Perpetual then runs “another version of time” in which those children did not die but get to live out their lives. The first thing in the book that didn’t work for me is this first chapter: it sets an expectation that is never even close to being realised because, basically, that chapter is then ignored for the rest of the book. I know that this is because of the author’s overall intention. In an interview with The Bookseller, Spufford says:

<i>”It struck me that those children were perched on the threshold of enormous change, and that you couldn’t really take in what had been stolen from them by one German rocket unless you reconstructed what they might have got. But of course, I didn’t want to play biographical games with real dead children, so I invented my own London borough [Bexford] and my own similar, but not quite the same, V2, so I was free to weave forward in time what they should have, might have, could have had.”</i>

So, the idea is to show us ordinary lives, and that is exactly what the book sets about doing. But it really does make you wonder how the first chapter helps with that. For me, if that first chapter was moved to be the final chapter of the book it would have a lot more emotional impact and make the point of the book a lot more poignant.

Once the book picks up the threads of the lives of Ben, Jo, Val, Alec and Vern, it becomes a very interesting social history of a generation. We spend a day with each of the five in each of 1949, 1964, 1979, 1994 and 2009. This fifteen year gap between sections is a very deliberate choice. In the same interview as quoted above, Spufford says:

<i>“I wanted a big enough gap so that you got moved onwards, not just through the decades but through the phases.”</i>

(He is referring to the phases of life we all go through).

There are good things and bad things about this large gap between chapters. The changes in society are emphasised by the jumps in time, but the fact that there are hardly any flashbacks included to fill in any details means that the book feels a bit disjointed: not only are we following five different lives (with some minimal overlap), but we are just getting isolated snapshots of those lives.

However, what these isolated snapshots do well is build a picture of life, mainly London-life, through the second half of the twentieth century. This is the aspect of the book that I enjoyed the most. Anyone who, like me, grew up in Britain through this period will recognise or remember a lot of the events, culture and attitudes on display. Some of it makes you less than proud to be British. My personal abhorrence for all things racist meant that some of the sections were difficult for me to read, especially one near the centre of the book, but that is balanced by other sections that actually brought tears to my eyes. People will respond differently to the five different lives presented to us here, but the ones I found most affecting were Ben and Jo, Ben struggling with mental health issues and Jo with her synaesthesia. Val’s story also has some powerful moments.

Overall, I found the beginning and end of the book relatively weak but, even though the episodic nature of the book makes it feel a bit disjointed, I did enjoy the central stories of five lives, the story of a generation.

Whilst Christmas 2020 was never going to go down as the best of times, it was certainly made a great deal brighter by the reading of Francis Spufford’s latest novel, the superb ‘Light Perpetual’. This is a wonderfully engrossing story, despite beginning with an account of the November 1944 V-2 attack on the New Cross Road branch of Woolworths in which 15 children lost their lives. Spufford imagines the deceased fictional Alec, Vern, Jo, Val and Ben as they would have been had they lived beyond this moment. In his words it is ‘their lost chance to experience the rest of the twentieth century.’
Mainly set in the fictitious, yet wholly recognisable, London Borough of Bexford, we follow their lives from primary school to old age over twenty-year intervals. Not only does Spufford conjure up the heinous National Front, the closing of Fleet Street, corrupt investment practices, the lack of support for the mentally ill and the injustices faced by women as second-class citizens. He also celebrates multi-cultural London, the strength of family bonds, the power of music and the acceptance of imperfection as Alec, Vern, Jo, Val and Ben go about their lives. This is a novel with a huge, generous beating heart but which never becomes sentimental in the telling even though, ultimately, Spufford allows most of his five disparate central characters to age knowing they are loved.
A novel that ends its first chapter with, ‘Come, other chances. Come, unsounded deep. Come, undivided light. Come dust.’ comes almost full circle in its final chapter with the pronouncement, ‘…the light is very good.’ Images of light weave a subtle pattern throughout the novel and yet it is with a jolt that we are reminded in the closing lines that these full lives have never been led, that their children have never existed, that their triumphs and disasters, passions and compassion are as nothing. ‘Light Perpetual’ is a celebration of the fullness of human experience and, through this, an acknowledgement of the enduring pain of loss.
My thanks to NetGalley and Faber & Faber Ltd for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

The award winning Francis Spufford has returned with a stellar concept novel that begins in November 1944 in a crowded Woolworth's store in Lambert Street in the London Borough of Bexford. Everyone, including children, and many in the surrounding area and buildings are incinerated as the store is hit by a V2 German rocket. Amongst the dead are Jo, her sister, Val, Alec, Ben and Vernon, young children that Spufford resurrects in a parallel world, shining a beam of light on their lives that we glimpse at specific periods of time, lives that illustrate and embody the changing world in terms of changing social and sexual norms and attitudes, technology, employment, politics, and a ongoing transformation of London and the nation.

Each child has a distinct personality that we first encounter at their primary school, as they sing in class and as Ben attends a football match with his father. We see the first signs of what singing means to the bullying Vern, which later turns into a love of opera and opera singers, the power and magic of a music which reduces him to a puddle, which later almost derails his plans to dupe up and coming Millwall footballer, Joe McLeish, whom he wines and dines at the exclusive Cafe Royal. It is an act that returns to haunt him at the latter stages of his life at a corporate penthouse VIP package for a match, remaining unrepentent in an echo of the Millwall fans anthem, 'no-one likes us and we don't care'. We see them grow up as members of their families, becoming parents, grandparents, the marriages, separations and divorce, observing at close quarters, intimate family and personal relationships as the years go by, right up to the point they stare death in the face. They work on newspapers, as teachers, bus conductors, con men, musicians, developers, as mental health patients, serving time in prison, and in hospices.

The joys of reading this include the rich descriptions of the location which is a character in itself, the compulsive character developments, the highs and the lows of a group of individuals that comes across as so authentic. The intricate details, complexities and drama of the protagonists personal and professional lives are depicted with thought, care and expertise, I was riveted and captivated by a singing lesson that Jo gives to a diverse class of Year 10 pupils at Bexford Hill Comprehensive School, by Val's despair at ending up with a brutally violent fascist thug for a boyfriend, and the mental health issues experienced by Ben. As a reader, I know that these lives were snuffed out in 1944, but Spufford made me believe in the parallel lives that he conjures for them amidst the shifting cultural, social, political, economic change of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in London and Britain. A superb and memorable read that will linger in my mind for a considerable time to come. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Faber and Faber for an ARC.

“But if the different bits and pieces of his life, rising, lofted as if by a bubble of force from below, are arranged in a messy spiral of hours and years, then mightn’t it be the case, mightn’t there be a place, mightn’t there be an angle, from which you could see the whole accidental mass composing, just from that angle, into some momentary order you could never have noticed at the time? Mightn’t there be a line of sight, not ours, from which the seeming cloud of debris of our days, no more in order than (say) the shredded particles riding the wavefront of an explosion, prove to align?”

Francis Spufford’s previous novel Golden Hill was deservedly much acclaimed, winning a number of awards for debut novels (which as an aside was slightly odd, as to me his debut novel was the fascinating Red Plenty, which was marketed as non-fiction).

His latest novel, Light Perpetual, to be published in 2021 (thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC), was inspired by the real-life V2 rocket attack in November 1944 which struck Woolworths in New Cross.

See here for some eyewitness accounts: https://ww2today.com/25-november-1944-168-dead-as-woolworths-obliterated-in-v2-rocket-attack

Spufford explains the background to Life Perpetual:

“For the last twelve years, I’ve been walking to work at Goldsmiths College past a plaque commemorating the 1944 V-2 attack on the New Cross Road branch of Woolworths. Of the 168 people who died, fifteen were aged eleven or under. The novel is partly written in memory of those South London children, and their lost chance to experience the rest of the twentieth century.

The book would have been finished sooner had I not taken a detour through the back of a wardrobe”

(This last a reference to the fact that between Golden Hill and Light Perpetual he wrote a novel to fill a gap in CS Lewis’s Narnia series, but one that the estate of the author did not authorize and so which may only be published in a decade or so when the copyright on the novels expires)

The UK publisher hails Light Perpetual as ‘ingenious’ and the US one as a ‘boldly inventive novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives.’ Which, unfortunately, I think it to missell it.

The novel’s concept is to imagine 5 children who might have died in the attack (we actually get very little detail on them pre their death) and then to imagine their lives if they hadn’t died.

But it doesn’t really work - what we get is an account of the lives of 5 people who were children in 1944 in New Cross (which oddly becomes the fictitious Bexford in the novel, rather incongruous with an otherwise detailed recreation of London) but one where the link to the bombing isn't really relevant. Kate Atkinson this isn't.

The story itself is a beautifully written sketch of London life during the period 1944-2019 (the story skips decades giving us snapshots of the five protagonists in different eras, their stories only occassionally overlapping except for two who are sisters) albeit one that was a little sentimental for my taste (perhaps an odd comment in a book with drug addiction, bulimia, mental health issues and a racially-motivated murder but the book has a strong and compassionate heart at its core). It also has a strong musical flavour that may work for other readers but which didn’t click for me.

Overall for me rather a disappointment but largely as I was expecting something more formally ambitious and what the novel was, although executed well, isn't my style of novel.

3 stars for me although approached as what it is, I can see other readers appreciating this far more.

I loved Golden Hill so I was eagerly looking forward to this book by Francis Spufford and it did not let me down.

Beautifully written with a complex plot that did have echoes of Kate Atkinson, I was engrossed in the descriptions of the main characters who were brought to life in such an elegant and descriptive manner and the constant zig-zagging of the plot in terms of time and place.

A beautiful read.

Already a strong contender for my book of 2021, and we've still got more than a month of 2020 to go. Beautiful, heartfelt writing, reminiscent of William Boyd in the deeply felt characters and emotional astuteness, as well as Kate Atkinson's Life After Life in the concept. The plot moves so gracefully through time, and contemplates the small details that make life worth living - and at times unbearable - as it observes life's beauty in all its forms. Exquistely written, a very special book.