Light Perpetual: A Novel

"Light Perpetual opens with a slow-motion depiction of a real-life incident: the dropping of a V-2 rocket on a Woolworths store in London one Saturday in 1944. What follows is a narrative that imagines the lives that five of the victims – all children – might have lived. Avoiding the pitfalls of sentimentality, Francis Spufford also conjures up an impressionistic history of six decades of London life – encompassing “The Swinging Sixties” and Thatcherism – that ends in 2009 when the “children” are about 70. In resurrecting lives that never were, Spufford’s novel is a miracle, not only of art but also of empathy."