Welcome to Litsy!

In 1944, a bomb destroyed a South London woolworths. Among the 168 who died, the author has imagined 5 young children's lives at 15-year intervals until 2009. The life that might have been for each one is absorbing as we follow their various highs + lows + in parts is very moving. The book ends with a reminder not to dwell on paths not taken, and I put it down wishing there was more and wiping away moisture from my eye.

I'm really torn on this book. 😕

The idea was intriguing. Lives of five children who died in a bombing in WWII are reimagined against an evolving London backdrop.

Personally, I wish the author had written about fewer children because it was difficult to follow the emerging storylines and become really invested in each character. It is beautifully written though which kept me reading.

Ultimately, this book did not work for me. It follows 5 people who died in WWII London as children and imagines what their lives would have been had they not died. The prose is bloated in a way that detracts from learning more about the characters, one of the 5 is almost entirely ignored, and the framing conceit serves as a distraction rather than enhancing the story.

I both liked the conceit of this book and didn't at all understand why it was necessary for framing the story. Since this book is about divergent paths and choices in life, I suppose that's fitting. #historicalfiction

Gosh, that felt like a mammoth undertaking although it's not a long novel in terms of pages.
I think it was incredible prose, such fine detail and description yet almost overwhelmed the actual story. I found it challenging to keep up with which character was which and had to keep checking.

Having been on the waiting list since the start of October, this one finally popped into my inbox from the library 😊😍. The opening chapter was rather unusual and took me a re read to understand...

The fictional alternate lives of five children killed by the Woolworth V2 rocket, which killed 160 people in 1944. This takes snapshots of their lives, one day every 15 yrs. What comes out is a post-WW2 history of the cultural changes of a fictionalized southeast London suburb. It‘s in some ways very simple, but also has something to it that is a little hard to pin down. Seems the more I think about it the more I appreciate it.

Chasing the Booker longlist. I‘ll probably start this Monday.

It's very good, though the glorious opening chapter is tonally very different from what follows. I enjoyed the format: nicely observed slices of life down the years of Jo, Val, Alec, Ben and Vern. I don't think the premise adds anything; the lives they'd have lived had they not died as kids in the Blitz (in chapter 1). Oh, so, *imagined* lives, you mean? Of made-up people? Like they're characters? In a... what's it called now? A novel, perhaps?

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London, November 1944, several people in a bombing among them five school kids. A book about what if that hadn‘t happened and we get the potential stories of Jo, Val, Alec, Ben and Vern. At times I forgot that they hadn‘t died in the first pages.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

#BookerLongList2021

This novel is the reason I love to read award lists. Long listed for the Booker. Has a premise that I hate and would never have read this book because of it. In the end this was the perfect device to make the authors point. Large cast of characters and beautiful the writing. The end was everything! 4 🌟

What I liked the most in this story, where the premise is “what might have been”, is the structure - we follow lives of the five children (all five dies in the first chapter) in alternating chapters and each chapter begins 15 years later. I found this as a very interesting decision, which also allows to cover all the big changes/shifts in the society from the 1944 until 2009 … The characters are well portrayed, excellent first chapter … 👇

My favorite of the Booker long list I‘ve read so far, I think. Such exquisite writing about life, which is made even more powerful by the premise of the book.

30 Jul-19 Aug 2021
Booker Longlist 1 - will be lucky to finish in time for next year‘s longlist if they all take this long!
Spufford imagines the stories of 5 children who died in the Blitz. The narrative resembles the 7up series - dropping in on the 5 periodically for a quick catch-up of what occurred in the intervening years. I enjoyed these snippets and the wonderful descriptions of mundane activities, but unsure what the point ultimately was.

Well I guess I knew what Spufford was trying to do here, but I just don‘t think it was done very well. Light Perpetual starts with a literal and figurative bang. The first chapter is out the gate EXCELLENT writing. From there? Fizzles like a sparkler at the end of its thread. In the end I felt like this novel had a lot of potential, that just wasn‘t realised. For the most part, I was unmoved by the plights of the 5 characters.

I wanted to love this. I thought the premise was clever and loved the idea of following characters through their whole lives. However…I really struggled to keep all the characters and their stories straight. This might just be my issue but I suspect we just didn‘t get enough time with each character to make them memorable. I‘d definitely be interested in picking up this author‘s other book however. #doublespin

I part-listened to this and part-read it on Libby. It‘s the story of what would have happened to 5 children had they not lost their lives in a WWII bombing raid. It‘s both sweeping, over many years, but also detailed and focused on the minutiae of life.

I felt a strong focus on one specific character though (not necessarily a bad thing) and would be intrigued to see if anyone else saw that or if it‘s just my perception.

#bookerprizelonglist

What a magnificent book and such amazing use of language. Words layered upon each other like some enormous oil painting. Thanks to @thepigeonhole for the readalong.
I will definitely be seeking out more writing by Francis Spufford

‘Matter has its smallest, finite subdivisions. Time does not. One ten-thousandth of a second is a fat volume of time, with onion-skin pages uncountable.‘