Book Review: Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
Light Perpetual was in my 2024 top ten historical novels. Here’s the full review, with one section for readers deciding what to read next, and a more technical section for writers looking for comparison titles or inspiration.
The headline: Five wartime London children are followed for five decades, tracing how family, personality and life incidents shape where we end up. Beautiful prose, and intricate intersecting stories of characters we (mostly) love.
For readers…
Setting
We join our five protagonists in 1949 at school in Bexford aged nine. We meet them again in 1964, 1979, 1994 and 2009, in and around London (with one chapter in LA and another in Margate). I know this stretches the definition of historical, but the first, life-defining half is over 50 years ago.
Characters
Jo – dreamy, musical, loyal, saved in later life by an unexpected child
Val – Jo’s twin sister – flirty, glamorous, falls in with skinheads with disastrous consequences
Vern – a bully, greedy, an unscrupulous property developer
Alec – smart, a joker, loses everything then finds purpose in later life
Ben – quiet, mentally unstable, finds love and dies happy
Story
Five schoolkids in post-war Bexford already have distinct personalities. In 60s London their lives diverge. Alex follows his father into Fleet Street typesetting, Val encounters a handsome stranger in Margate, Vern speculates in property, Ben is trapped by medication and Jo sings in a Soho club. Fifteen years later, in 1979, their lives have not worked out as planned and all face difficult choices. Aged 50, in 1994, some of our characters, older and possibly wiser, have headed in new directions, finding love or a second career. In the final act, in 2009, some get their comeuppance while others find redemption and happiness from the people around them.
Why read Light Perpetual?
Traces the impact of early decisions on a life and shows the potential to change course and find happiness. For London-philes, some vibrant recreations of 1960s Soho, a Camden gig in 1979 and the gentrification of south London. But mostly five fully rounded, quirky, flawed characters, four of whom we root for, and one we love to detest.
If you liked…
The multi-character, London-centric narratives of Zadie Smith or Terence Davies’ Distant Voices Still Lives or Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday morning or the films of Mike Leigh, then you will enjoy Light Perpetual.
For writers…
Prose
Light Perpetual has two distinct modes. The scenes of daily life unfold in an easy conversational style. But when the author is focussed on a topic that is important to a character, such as music for Jo or typesetting for Alec, he spirals into deep, lyrical detail.
Structure
A short prelude introduces the bomb that fell in 1944.
We join all the children in 1949 aged nine, four in one scene.
Then we skip to 1964 and follow each character in turn in their own chapter.
All are revisited in 1979, but not in the same order.
By our fourth visit in 1994, our characters are in their fifties.
The final round, in 2009, reunites twins Jo and Val, and resolves the stories of Vern, Alec and Ben.
Historical background
In 1944 a V2 rocket landed in Woolworths in South London and among the casualties were eleven children. This book is the imagined lives of fictional children living through the second half of the twentieth century in London.
About the author
Francis Spufford’s first novel, Golden Hill, won the Costa First Novel Award, among others. Light Perpetual is his second novel, and he has also written several non-fiction works. His third novel, Cahokia Jazz, was published in 2023. https://www.faber.co.uk/author/francis-spufford/