3.0
Light Perpetual
ByPublisher Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, NPR, Slate, Lit Hub, Fresh Air, and more
From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, an “extraordinary…symphonic…casually stunning” (The Wall Street Journal) novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.
Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in South London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children.
Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel, inspired by real events, lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the lives of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs and disasters; of second chances and redemption.
Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual “offers a moving view of how people confront the gap between their expectations and their reality” (The New Yorker) and illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory, and the preciousness of life.
From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, an “extraordinary…symphonic…casually stunning” (The Wall Street Journal) novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.
Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in South London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children.
Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel, inspired by real events, lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the lives of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs and disasters; of second chances and redemption.
Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual “offers a moving view of how people confront the gap between their expectations and their reality” (The New Yorker) and illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory, and the preciousness of life.
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3.0
Heather Isaacs
Created 18 days agoShare
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“What to say about this book..... Overall I really enjoyed this book. I loved the premise of the lives that could have/should have been and I really appreciated that all of the "children"(turned adult) didn't have fairy tale lives and they weren't all nice or honest or even all particularly good people because had their lives not been cut short that would've likely been the case. I thought the T+0:1944 section was too long and mildly confusing. T+5:1949 was similarly mildly confusing and it took me well into this section to understand how this book was going to be laid out(which might be because I listened to the audiobook, not sure). T+20:1964 meeting the children as young adults and getting a real glimpse of who they are and who there going to become. Good Section. T+35:1979. Not going to lie. The repetition of "Charred Ribs"almost made me give up, which I suppose, is the point. Overall this section of the book was my least favorite and was so depressing. The "children"are middle aged and almost the same age as I am and it shows.... T+50:1994 shows just how much the world changed in the 50 years from 1944-1994 and as a result some of our characters found themselves obsolete in the changed world or alternatively have really found their place and voice. T+65:2009. All the "children" feel their time coming to an end and we get some look backs on their lives and I found it really hopeful and human and heartbreaking. If I would have had to rate this based on the first half of the book it would have been 2 stars at best but the second half of this book really pulled it together for me.”Emma Reading
Created 2 months agoShare
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Matt
Created 6 months agoShare
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“Thankful this is over. Whatever the author was trying to do with this was lost on me.
Light Perpetual? Perpetually dull.”
Kate
Created 6 months agoShare
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“I could really appreciate what this book was trying to do. The ordinary made extraordinary, what if etc. I also liked how believable the characters and their lives were. However, I just could not get invested and really struggled to finish. The writing style was just not for me, I felt there was a lot of unnecessary descriptions and the book could have been edited down.”Kat W
Created 8 months agoShare
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About Francis Spufford
Francis Spufford began as the author of four highly praised books of nonfiction. His first book, I May Be Some Time, won the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Nonfiction Book of 1996, the Banff Mountain Book Prize, and a Somerset Maugham Award. It was followed by The Child That Books Built, Backroom Boys, and most recently, Unapologetic. But with Red Plenty in 2012 he switched to the novel. Golden Hill won multiple literary prizes on both sides of the Atlantic; Light Perpetual was longlisted for the Booker Prize. In England he is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
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