jesshindes's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I came to this novel with some prejudices for and against the author which I should maybe declare. For: I really loved his previous novel, Golden Hill, so much so that I had to put the book down for six weeks when Something Happened to my favourite character. Con: I got really annoyed by a recent-ish episode where he apparently wrote The Next Great Narnia Novel and then there was an article in the Guardian about how great this book was with all ppl like Philip Pullman saying "Oh this is CS Lewis reincarnate" and then Spufford kicking up a fuss bc the Lewis estate had said he couldn't publish it (not that they had ever said he could, he just wrote it and hoped for the best). Anyway newsflash that is just called FANFICTION and people are writing it every day and he could post it on AO3 if he just wanted people to read it, he just couldn't make money from it!! Sorry but something about middle aged men acting like they invented fanfic drives me nuts ahahaha
Anyway
I came to this book with reasonably high hopes but I was ultimately underwhelmed by it. I should say though that I think the opening chapter is great and very cleverly and skillfully written. It describes a bomb falling on a South London Woolworths during the course of WW2, and it renders the scene in a really effective slow-motion, so you see the building and all the shoppers (including a bunch of children) and the bomb powering towards them, crawling crawling and then suddenly it pulls back with the flash and the bang of the explosion. Really cinematic and great.
The rest of the novel, though, deals with the lives of those children in another universe in which the bomb hadn't fallen, so you trace the five of them effectively across the latter half of the twentieth century, up until old age and in one case death; and this was the part that just didn't persuade me so much. I can understand the concept - these five ordinary lives stand in for all the other ordinary lives cut short by war, you see these deaths as the end of all this possibility - but Spufford suffered for me by comparison to Kate Atkinson, whose Life After Life and A God in Ruins (a pair of novels) kind of look at something similar but do it in a way that for me was much more fully realised and did much more with the form of the novel. Light Perpetual has that great opener and then turns into basically just a straightforward novel skipping between these five protagonists - some of whose stories I enjoyed at points, some of whom I was less persuaded by (there's a guy called Vern who is a Fat Man and this is a key element of his character, which I always find quite annoying). By the end it sort of gestures back to where it started with but I just didn't think it did quite enough with the idea. Also this is a very minor petty point but it's set in a made-up area of South-East London called 'Bexford' which is somewhere between Catford and Lewisham and Deptford and New Cross and the imaginary geography of the thing drove me NUTS, the whole time I was like 'but where IS it', why could he not just set it in New Cross (where a real Woolworths really did get bombed) I do not know ahahaha
However this was a minor issue and the bigger thing for me was that I just felt like this didn't push its big idea far or hard enough for what I wanted it to do. But it was nominated for the Booker so obviously many people disagreed!
Anyway
I came to this book with reasonably high hopes but I was ultimately underwhelmed by it. I should say though that I think the opening chapter is great and very cleverly and skillfully written. It describes a bomb falling on a South London Woolworths during the course of WW2, and it renders the scene in a really effective slow-motion, so you see the building and all the shoppers (including a bunch of children) and the bomb powering towards them, crawling crawling and then suddenly it pulls back with the flash and the bang of the explosion. Really cinematic and great.
The rest of the novel, though, deals with the lives of those children in another universe in which the bomb hadn't fallen, so you trace the five of them effectively across the latter half of the twentieth century, up until old age and in one case death; and this was the part that just didn't persuade me so much. I can understand the concept - these five ordinary lives stand in for all the other ordinary lives cut short by war, you see these deaths as the end of all this possibility - but Spufford suffered for me by comparison to Kate Atkinson, whose Life After Life and A God in Ruins (a pair of novels) kind of look at something similar but do it in a way that for me was much more fully realised and did much more with the form of the novel. Light Perpetual has that great opener and then turns into basically just a straightforward novel skipping between these five protagonists - some of whose stories I enjoyed at points, some of whom I was less persuaded by (there's a guy called Vern who is a Fat Man and this is a key element of his character, which I always find quite annoying). By the end it sort of gestures back to where it started with but I just didn't think it did quite enough with the idea. Also this is a very minor petty point but it's set in a made-up area of South-East London called 'Bexford' which is somewhere between Catford and Lewisham and Deptford and New Cross and the imaginary geography of the thing drove me NUTS, the whole time I was like 'but where IS it', why could he not just set it in New Cross (where a real Woolworths really did get bombed) I do not know ahahaha
However this was a minor issue and the bigger thing for me was that I just felt like this didn't push its big idea far or hard enough for what I wanted it to do. But it was nominated for the Booker so obviously many people disagreed!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Violence, Murder, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Moderate: Eating disorder
bundy23's review against another edition
2.0
DNF. A great opening that quickly becomes boring overwritten cliched meh. I can see why some will love it but I only made it as far as the rock'n'roll girl and that was just too much for me. Apparently it had a good final 100 pages but I'll never know. Absolutely no surprise that it was on the Booker long list
jeannelovesbooks's review against another edition
5.0
In 1944, towards the end of WWII a rocket smashed into Woolworth’s in London killing 168 people including several children. The tragedy inspired Francis Spufford to write Light Perpetual, a reimagining of five crushed lives. We’re briefly introduced to the kids via an opening chapter that’s as bold, riveting and devastating as any you’ll ever read.
‘Shoppers, saucepans, ballistic missile. What’s wrong with this picture?’
And then whoosh … normality is restored in an alternative reality: a singing class that introduces us to the five and a sense of the future paths that might have been. Class bully Vernon ‘Vermin’, the poster-boy for Thatcherism; smart-talking defender of the underdog Alec the trade unionist; gentle Ben whose demons chart the developing science of psychiatry; and twins Jo and Val, one a passionate musician and the other, ‘always hanging around the boys’, who’s seduced into a chilling marriage. In 15-year leaps each shines a light on the social, political and economic transformation of 20th century London, their choices and pitfalls rooted in childhood personalities. This isn’t a glimpse into the world of great inventors, artists or leaders. This is a chronicle of folk stumbling through life navigating the complexities, the dramas and the everyday. Did their lives matter? You might as well ask, does any life matter?
Spufford could have tantalised us with the knowledge that four of the five survived, prompting a race through the pages to find out who was the unlucky one . Or perhaps dealt the ultimate blow by revealing their childhood fate in an epilogue. Choosing to start the book with their deaths is a masterstroke. The power of the opening scene was in creating a more meditative experience: whenever I remembered they’d all died, came a secondary reminder that they never existed. A sense of loss upon loss.
There’s a satisfying symmetry to the story. The torture of Miss Turnbull’s 1940s singing class contrasts beautifully to a later scene of reluctant teenagers coaxed into creating a moment of musical magic. Utterly glorious. In fact there are so many standout scenes, the forgettable scenes would make a shorter list. I loved this novel. Loved it.
‘Shoppers, saucepans, ballistic missile. What’s wrong with this picture?’
And then whoosh … normality is restored in an alternative reality: a singing class that introduces us to the five and a sense of the future paths that might have been. Class bully Vernon ‘Vermin’, the poster-boy for Thatcherism; smart-talking defender of the underdog Alec the trade unionist; gentle Ben whose demons chart the developing science of psychiatry; and twins Jo and Val, one a passionate musician and the other, ‘always hanging around the boys’, who’s seduced into a chilling marriage. In 15-year leaps each shines a light on the social, political and economic transformation of 20th century London, their choices and pitfalls rooted in childhood personalities. This isn’t a glimpse into the world of great inventors, artists or leaders. This is a chronicle of folk stumbling through life navigating the complexities, the dramas and the everyday. Did their lives matter? You might as well ask, does any life matter?
Spufford could have tantalised us with the knowledge that four of the five survived, prompting a race through the pages to find out who was the unlucky one . Or perhaps dealt the ultimate blow by revealing their childhood fate in an epilogue. Choosing to start the book with their deaths is a masterstroke. The power of the opening scene was in creating a more meditative experience: whenever I remembered they’d all died, came a secondary reminder that they never existed. A sense of loss upon loss.
There’s a satisfying symmetry to the story. The torture of Miss Turnbull’s 1940s singing class contrasts beautifully to a later scene of reluctant teenagers coaxed into creating a moment of musical magic. Utterly glorious. In fact there are so many standout scenes, the forgettable scenes would make a shorter list. I loved this novel. Loved it.
mazza57's review against another edition
2.0
every year I look at the Booker Prize longlist and consider what I might read. This one caught my imagination. Having read it I have to ask what was the point? % children are kiled in a London bomblast of 1944 - the author imagines their lives if they had lived. WHY WHY WHY did she not just create a book surrounding 5 people as the grew??????? WHAT ON EARTH is the point of the bomb????????
What she writes is in parts really good but as an imaginary life it has no meaning. I just DO NOT understand it's premise
For all these reasons and the fact that judging panels do not think like ordinary readers it will probably win the booker prize
What she writes is in parts really good but as an imaginary life it has no meaning. I just DO NOT understand it's premise
For all these reasons and the fact that judging panels do not think like ordinary readers it will probably win the booker prize
nfirdaws's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
snrousseau's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
jenna_cross's review against another edition
2.0
I really wanted to and thought I would enjoy this story much more than I did. It’s the last full book I read before I went into a reading dry spell for almost 2 months. Ugh. Maybe it was bad timing.
booksbecreads's review against another edition
2.0
“He kept wanting to make things happen, when he should have found something that was happening anyway, and just gone along with it.”
It took me way too long to get into this book
It took me way too long to get into this book
rachelemm's review against another edition
3.0
I picked up this book after it was longlisted for the Booker Prize and, while I found it to be an OK read, I wasn't particularly impressed by the story overall.
We follow 5 people who would have been killed in 1944 by a German bomb but who, in Spufford's version of events, went on to live full lives. These 5 individuals are not based on real historical people, however, and so the idea of an alternative reality in which they live is no more or less compelling than if Spufford had told their story without the use of this narrative device.
We never again return to that opening scene in 1944 where the bomb explodes. A scene, by the way, which I thought was wonderfully rendered despite the fact that it was, for the purposes of the narrative, redundant. The Woolworths where the bombing took place is mentioned briefly towards the end of the novel but it is only a very brief mention and is provides an observation rather than any kind of resolution.
The 5 characters we follow were interesting enough to keep me reading and we revisit them at intervals of 15 years between 1944 and 2009. We see through their stories how London has changed and how society's views have changed too but none of this is particularly ground breaking or special.
I would be interested to understand why the Booker judges chose this book over others to take to the longlist. Perhaps it reveals more on a subsequent read? In any case, I wouldn't say this was a bad book but I've read much better ones this year that I, personally would have preferred to see on the Booker longlist in place of this one.
We follow 5 people who would have been killed in 1944 by a German bomb but who, in Spufford's version of events, went on to live full lives. These 5 individuals are not based on real historical people, however, and so the idea of an alternative reality in which they live is no more or less compelling than if Spufford had told their story without the use of this narrative device.
We never again return to that opening scene in 1944 where the bomb explodes. A scene, by the way, which I thought was wonderfully rendered despite the fact that it was, for the purposes of the narrative, redundant. The Woolworths where the bombing took place is mentioned briefly towards the end of the novel but it is only a very brief mention and is provides an observation rather than any kind of resolution.
The 5 characters we follow were interesting enough to keep me reading and we revisit them at intervals of 15 years between 1944 and 2009. We see through their stories how London has changed and how society's views have changed too but none of this is particularly ground breaking or special.
I would be interested to understand why the Booker judges chose this book over others to take to the longlist. Perhaps it reveals more on a subsequent read? In any case, I wouldn't say this was a bad book but I've read much better ones this year that I, personally would have preferred to see on the Booker longlist in place of this one.
debff's review against another edition
3.0
The premise - imagining the lives that might have been for 5 children killed by a bomb in a London Woolworths in 1944 - is completely underused. The bomb is described in extreme slow motion in chapter 1, followed by a literary equivalent of the (wonderful) 7 Up documentary series: we get snapshots of the characters' lives at 15-year intervals. An easy enough read, but a good idea squandered.