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3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Pleasant enough read with Ben being a special favourite- the depiction of his mental health in his earlier years is amazingly well done. But I didn’t feel the main conceit of the book really had much to do with what came afterwards? Which made it something else and to me not totally clear or not so clear as it could have been, I wanted it to be more than a sentimental look at life passing. What did strike me , and is beautifully shown, is all the other lives touched by the characters , making me reflect on the impossibility of knowing how different the world becomes all they time due to the violence we inflict on one another.
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Light Perpetual is a novel with virtually no plot. In 1944, a group of Londoners at a Woolworths are killed by a bomb. Among them were children. What, wonders Francis Spufford, might have happened to these children? Light Perpetual is his answer to this question: in sum, they lead ordinary lives. Some of them marry and have children and grandchildren of their own. Some of them make terrible decisions. Some of them have painful problems. Some of them are happy, some are not. And in the end, they are old, left with their own memories of lives that they at least tried to make the best of.
What, then, is the point? Late in the book, Jo, now a teacher in her mid-fifties, conducts a classroom full of high-schoolers in singing practice. "She just watches," Spufford writes, "their mouths opening and closing effortfully, the gasps for breath, as for a whole ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds, forty seconds, Year 10 sustain the chord. Can they hear it, this immense organized sound they are making together? Can they hear the organ that they have briefly become, whose separate pipes are all those sticky pink organic tubes in teenage bodies? Imperfect pipes, made of damp twisted cartilage without a single straight line, pumped up by weird fluttering bladders, and yet capable of sounding a chord that seems to lay hold on some order in the world that already existed before we came along and started to sing. Making an order that matches an order. Music is strange, she wants them to see, and one of the things that is strangest about it is that it comes from our messy bodies. Sing, Hayley. Sing, Tyrone. Sing, Jamila, Simon, Samantha, Jerome. Don't stop till you must." That, then, is the point -- that the voices of the dead children were lost prematurely, that they were cheated of their opportunity to become part of the sustained chord, that -- perhaps even more than that -- we lost the opportunity to hear their voices in that chord. Yes, in Spufford's imagining, the children were ordinary -- they did not cure cancer or solve the crisis in the Middle East -- some of them were not even very good people. Some of them you might give a wide berth were you to meet them on the sidewalk. But still -- they should have been part of us, and they were not.
Fortuitously, I read this book the same week that a teenager murdered four of his classmates sixty-odd miles away from my house. As I read the book, I thought repeatedly of Tate, Hana, Madisyn, and Justin. Of course I did -- how could I not? Their voices stilled, never again to be part of the chord. They too should have been part of us, and now they are not.
It's a story that repeats forever -- senseless loss. You recover from one instance of it and another lurks around the corner. "It's a sad song," says Hermes in Hadestown, "but we sing it anyway/ Cause, here's the thing: To know how it ends/And still begin to sing it again/As if it might turn out this time."
Light Perpetual isn't a typical novel -- no plot to speak of, no real story arcs, no three-act structure with a payoff and denouement. Maybe in a different frame of mind, in a different world, it wouldn't have worked for me. But in this frame of mind, in this particular world, it was one of the best books I've read this year.
What, then, is the point? Late in the book, Jo, now a teacher in her mid-fifties, conducts a classroom full of high-schoolers in singing practice. "She just watches," Spufford writes, "their mouths opening and closing effortfully, the gasps for breath, as for a whole ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds, forty seconds, Year 10 sustain the chord. Can they hear it, this immense organized sound they are making together? Can they hear the organ that they have briefly become, whose separate pipes are all those sticky pink organic tubes in teenage bodies? Imperfect pipes, made of damp twisted cartilage without a single straight line, pumped up by weird fluttering bladders, and yet capable of sounding a chord that seems to lay hold on some order in the world that already existed before we came along and started to sing. Making an order that matches an order. Music is strange, she wants them to see, and one of the things that is strangest about it is that it comes from our messy bodies. Sing, Hayley. Sing, Tyrone. Sing, Jamila, Simon, Samantha, Jerome. Don't stop till you must." That, then, is the point -- that the voices of the dead children were lost prematurely, that they were cheated of their opportunity to become part of the sustained chord, that -- perhaps even more than that -- we lost the opportunity to hear their voices in that chord. Yes, in Spufford's imagining, the children were ordinary -- they did not cure cancer or solve the crisis in the Middle East -- some of them were not even very good people. Some of them you might give a wide berth were you to meet them on the sidewalk. But still -- they should have been part of us, and they were not.
Fortuitously, I read this book the same week that a teenager murdered four of his classmates sixty-odd miles away from my house. As I read the book, I thought repeatedly of Tate, Hana, Madisyn, and Justin. Of course I did -- how could I not? Their voices stilled, never again to be part of the chord. They too should have been part of us, and now they are not.
It's a story that repeats forever -- senseless loss. You recover from one instance of it and another lurks around the corner. "It's a sad song," says Hermes in Hadestown, "but we sing it anyway/ Cause, here's the thing: To know how it ends/And still begin to sing it again/As if it might turn out this time."
Light Perpetual isn't a typical novel -- no plot to speak of, no real story arcs, no three-act structure with a payoff and denouement. Maybe in a different frame of mind, in a different world, it wouldn't have worked for me. But in this frame of mind, in this particular world, it was one of the best books I've read this year.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This one really snuck up on me in a great way. The authors ability to flesh out all five of these characters in such a way was really interesting and very well done.
If you read the synopsis of the book you’ll know that the author basically wrote an alternative history of five children who (in reality) died in the 1940s when they were bombed at a Woolworths. It’s never really explained why he did that nor does the alternate timeline really do anything that he couldn’t have done if he had just made up some characters. The only caveat I can think of is that it gave Spufford the ability to tell these five stories that never really connect.
It does take a couple of chapters to get a grasp on who is who here as the book is broken into parts (each part a decade or two out, we reconnect with each of the five main characters) and many times the next time we see a character they’re very removed from what they were doing previously.
If I had to guess though, I think this is likely on its way to the shortlist for the Booker Prize. It’s the most straightforward novel of the bunch that I’ve read so far and the writing is masterful in parts (particularly the section set in the 70s and 2000’s).
If you read the synopsis of the book you’ll know that the author basically wrote an alternative history of five children who (in reality) died in the 1940s when they were bombed at a Woolworths. It’s never really explained why he did that nor does the alternate timeline really do anything that he couldn’t have done if he had just made up some characters. The only caveat I can think of is that it gave Spufford the ability to tell these five stories that never really connect.
It does take a couple of chapters to get a grasp on who is who here as the book is broken into parts (each part a decade or two out, we reconnect with each of the five main characters) and many times the next time we see a character they’re very removed from what they were doing previously.
If I had to guess though, I think this is likely on its way to the shortlist for the Booker Prize. It’s the most straightforward novel of the bunch that I’ve read so far and the writing is masterful in parts (particularly the section set in the 70s and 2000’s).
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I had a bumpy start with this book; I found the beginning wordy and with the introduction of a new character perspective five times, I felt like I was starting a new book and had to ground myself in a new setting and situation each time.
But it grew on me. And grew. And grew. By the end I loved it, I was wrapped up in the descriptive writing and felt very invested in the lives of Ben, Vern, Val, Jo and Alec.
The story starts with a bomb blast during the second world war on a branch of Woolworths in London. Five children in the shop at the time are instantly killed, their lives terminated before they’ve truly begun. What if they had lived? Francis Spufford takes this idea and marries it with the history of London – how might the events in the capital, the print worker strikes, the political changes, the presence of the Neo-Nazi groups have steered these lives?
The context is very British, very London, the sense of place is vivid. We track the five down at various points over the decades, we see how their lives have evolved since we last met. None of these journeys are remarkable, there is no fame, no fortune, just ordinary people living ordinary lives but therein lies the beauty of the message.
One part I felt was written extremely well was the chapter in which young adult Ben is suffering with his mental health. I do not share his diagnosis so I can’t know how accurate a depiction of a struggle this is, but the way Spufford writes this part really blew me away. I was left me with an insight and new level of empathy of what living with fear and paranoia must be like.
The end left me with a feeling of poignancy. I wanted more of their lives, I felt like we parted company too early and then I thought back to the beginning of the book….
Worthy longlistee.
Astonishingly great. Spufford clearly loves humanity and these characters. Reminiscent of Michael Apted's 7 Up series of films in its structure. Numerous passages I wanted to read aloud to my wife, and I kept talking about the book to her while I was reading it and for days afterward.