Light Perpetual

A luminous novel that works so well, is full of intelligent and sympathetic insight, and is very hard to put down. Spufford writes in such an effortlessly brilliant way, managing to combine the everyday with the profound. The novel is not only a portrait of five changing lives, but also a homage to London, this wonderful city that is both a constant yet a force that continues to reinvent itself. The central premise of Light Perpetual—and where the reader has constantly to pinch themselves—is about the precariousness and possibility of life, both lived as was/is, and how it could have been different. The novel imagines how five lives might have developed had a bomb not fallen in 1944. The characters with whom we engage throughout this novel are just possibilities. They end—like they begin in this work, and similar to us all—as simply dust. Read Light Perpetual to understand the concept of gratitude, how each life is unique but a tiny moment in a very uncertain world. Truly memorable.

By Francis Spufford