A review by maura_kathleen
Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Adding this review to StoryGraph close to two years after I read it, so I'll keep this short. While there were maybe a few sections of the book that didn't work for me all the way, I was deeply moved by it throughout by the strength of the premise alone. Every time I remembered that none of this was real, I was filled with a kind of doubled heartbreak -- on the one hand, over the sheer waste of violence, which this book stands as a profound testament against, and on the other, over the divide that must always separate fiction from reality, and one life from another. All fiction is potential; none of it is real, and all of it is. I'm not being very clear here because my feelings on this are complicated. This book is good, but its best level might be its meta, which I can't get over two years later.