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A review by damien_reads
Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
4.0
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).