A review by sharkybookshelf
Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

reflective

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

In November 1944 a bomb kills five London children…but what if it hadn’t exploded - how could their lives have played out?

The book is based around an interesting premise - what potential was lost when the bomb exploded - and having really enjoyed Golden Hill, I was really looking forward to this one. I particularly appreciated that the children’s lives did not turn out to be glorious - nobody found a cure for cancer or brokered world peace, they all live fairly ordinary lives with ups and downs (though some more dramatic than others). The book is a bit of a snapshotted meander through the latter half of 20th century Britain - strikes, skinheads, property booms and crashes, etc. - managing to take in a surprising amount of societal changes and movements, and there was some very uncomfortable reading at times. We catch up with the main characters every fifteen years and hear (or deduce) what happened in the interim, and occasionally I felt that we skipped over an interesting development. The end of the book had very obvious Christian overtones which I wasn’t a huge fan of - it just felt shoehorned in (and also just isn’t my thing). Overall, I did enjoy it, and Spufford’s writing is exceptionally descriptive (in a good way). An exploration of consequences, lost potential and the arbitrary nature of death, told through interesting snapshots of life in Britain throughout the post-WWII 20th century.