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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
inspiring
reflective
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:
No
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
informative
inspiring
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
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-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
Thank you to the author, publishers Faber & Faber and online book club The Pigeonhole for the opportunity to read this for free. This is an honest and voluntary review.
I’ve had to take a couple of days after finishing Light Perpetual to formulate this review. It’s a book which clearly has something to say, although I’m not sure I entirely got what that was. I suspect this would be a good subject for indepth book club discussions or literary analysis, because there’s a lot of substance to it.
This is a story about five lives. Five different people who we visit at various intervals. Twins Val and Jo – Val who marries a racist local right-wing leader and Jo who travels the world following her music. Vern who takes every opportunity to scheme and make money, not caring who he has to take advantage of. Alec the trade unionist finding a new future after technology replaces his first career. And, Ben suffering mental ill health at a time when it wasn’t recognised
All their lives have ups and downs. The good and the bad. The quality of the writing. The detail of the descriptions. The insight into the characters. It all allows the reader to get emotionally involved.
My only hesitation, the bit I’m not sure I ‘got’, is the underlying premise. The book starts with the five as children in a shop which is bombed in World War II. Then we step aside, change what happened just enough so that the five survive. But, that change of timeline, of narrative reality, doesn’t appear to have any further impact on the story. The time jumps all related back to the bombing, with the heading of each section called T+ the years which have passed since the bomb didn’t hit them. Yet there’s no further plot relevance that I can see. No explicit unravelling of their lives or the lives they impacted which would have been different if they hadn’t survived. That’s where I think the book may lend itself to deeper analysis. But, as an everyday reader I’m not sure what that starting point meant for the whole book.
Strong characters and great writing make this an easy to recommend book. However, replace the opening chapter with five children of similar age playing in the same playpark one day then follow their separate lives, and I don’t think the end result would have been any different.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
reflective
medium-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
Reading the synopsis of this book I was hooked before I even started reading. Beginning a book with killing the main characters and then imagining if that hadn't happened was definitely something I wanted to read.
Beginning to read the book I quickly picked my favourites of the 5 characters but loved reading about each and every one through each time period.
The writing was superb and evoked such amazing imagery of London throughout the years. By the end of the book I wished we were able to see the in-between of the years written about because I did not want to leave these characters.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes