Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by snoakes7001
Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
5.0
Light Perpetual begins during the second world war, with a bomb falling on a branch of Woolworths in southeast London killing the five main characters.
Francis Spufford then takes us to an alternative reality, where the bomb fell elsewhere, or failed to explode, and we see the lives of these five children play out. It's a clever way of connecting these otherwise mostly unrelated stories. We visit each character at set points of their lives and the writing is so beautiful, so intricately detailed, that by the end it feels as though each has starred in their own novel. It seems unbelievable that it all has fitted into a single book.
Sometimes a character contemplates their choices in life, pondering their might-have-beens and it feels as though Francis Spufford is reflecting back the possibilities of all the other lives they might have lived, or all the other novels he might have written. The level of research is phenomenal. Everything he writes about rings so true, whether it's printing techniques, the process of turning a school into an Academy, songwriting or mental health, it's as though he's lived a thousand lives just to write about these five.
Stunning prose, exquisitely layered.
Francis Spufford then takes us to an alternative reality, where the bomb fell elsewhere, or failed to explode, and we see the lives of these five children play out. It's a clever way of connecting these otherwise mostly unrelated stories. We visit each character at set points of their lives and the writing is so beautiful, so intricately detailed, that by the end it feels as though each has starred in their own novel. It seems unbelievable that it all has fitted into a single book.
Sometimes a character contemplates their choices in life, pondering their might-have-beens and it feels as though Francis Spufford is reflecting back the possibilities of all the other lives they might have lived, or all the other novels he might have written. The level of research is phenomenal. Everything he writes about rings so true, whether it's printing techniques, the process of turning a school into an Academy, songwriting or mental health, it's as though he's lived a thousand lives just to write about these five.
Stunning prose, exquisitely layered.