Light Perpetual

Difficult start - there is a stream of consciousness that takes a while to get used to. And oddly, I found the more I read, the more interesting it got.

Couldn't finish.

This novel follows the never-to-be-realized lives of five children who were killed in the 1944 bombing of a Woolworth's in a working class part of London. The book starts with their deaths and then proceeds to track their might-have-been lives at intervals of about 15 years. I found myself drawn into those lives, caring about what was happening to the characters, but then being caught up short remembering that these characters were already dead.

Not all of the characters are likeable or lead exemplary lives. One does his best to make a fortune by scamming people. Nevertheless, the lives are rich, full of passion and striving, and moments of love and dedication. The city of London is also a character, predating and outliving its occupants in the background, filled with the lives of millions of others, and suggesting eternity.

I'm not sure if this novel needed the deaths of its protagonists in the first chapter. On one hand, it provides a kind of paradox to meditate on for the rest of the book. On the other hand, I found it to be a stumbling block. I had to “forget” about it to care about the characters and what happened to them.

Summary: In 1944, a German rocket hit a Woolworths in South London, killing many. This novel explores what might have been if five of those children had not been killed. 

When encountering fiction, my primary method is to find authors I trust and to read their books without any investigation into the story. A couple of weeks ago, I was looking through a sale at Audible and saw that there was a new novel by Francis Spufford, an author I trust, and I purchased it without reading anything about it.

I started listening, and I was utterly lost and went back and read a little bit about the book to figure out what was going on The opening is a slow-motion description of a V2 rocket blast that killed a large number of people in a crowded Woolworth's department store. Spufford is writing an alternative history where that rocket never launched, or it failed somehow, and the Woolworths was not destroyed. This book follows the lives of five children from about nine years old until about 70. As readers, we check into their story with short vignettes that create an image of what their life is like, but we do not spend enough time with them to get a deep understanding of them.

I have read alternative history fiction before, which doesn't follow the typical model of alternative history, so I think Light Perpetual fails in that area. Generally, alternative history has one of two main models. Either unknown people from one time period go to another time through time travel, and either is shocked at the changes in technology and culture or use their knowledge of the future to make the lives of the past better. This story type is usually considered science fiction, and Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch or Eric Flint's 1632 series are good examples.

The other model of alternative history is to take some famous event or person and imagine a different reality. In this case, the story plays with the reader's knowledge of the natural history and the author's imagination of the alternative history. Stephen Carter's novel The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln imagines that Lincoln survives his assassination attempt in 1865 and two years later faces impeachment. Light Perpetual does not fit either of these two models. We as readers can know something about the history and cultural changes from 1944 until the early 2000s, but that is not alternative history because nothing has changed; it is just a fictional story set in our regular history. The framing of this novel as a type of alternative history, I don't think, really makes a lot of sense. The framing as alternative history distracts from the telling of a good story.

The second thing any potential readers of Francis Spufford need to know is that both of his novels have endings that change the reader's understanding of the whole novel until that point. I don't want to spoil either this or his novel about early NYC, Golden Hill, but I thought Golden Hill was a mediocre novel until the last handful of pages, and then I thought it was brilliant. So when I was about to give up on this novel, roughly 1/3 of the way through, I pressed on because I hoped for a similar resolution. And I was not disappointed, although what I got was not what I expected. Part of the problem of the early parts of Light Perpetual did not give me enough of the characters to be invested in their stories until I was about 2/3 of the way through the novel. I needed to feel like there would be resolution or redemption or people worth caring about. The novel got there, but it took a while.

A third thing that readers of Light Perpetual probably want to know is that Francis Spufford has written one of the few books of apologetics that I think is worth reading. I am not a fan of Christian apologetics as it is commonly conceived. Yes, Christians sometimes need help working through issues of faith and reason. But I do not think that most non-Christians are persuaded about the rationality or usefulness of Christianity by philosophical or other types of arguments. Christianity is about a relationship with Christ, not about argumentation and methodology. Francis Spufford's Unapologetic isn't trying to argue anyone into belief; he simply tells others that despite occasional issues of doubt and disbelief, he finds Christianity emotionally satisfying and that it “makes sense” of his experience. Once I was finished with Light Perpetual, I think Spufford was channeling that non-fiction defense of Christianity into a fictional story that could explore life's meaning.

Light Perpetual is not a book of Christian fiction that could be published in the US. First, there is too much sex, drugs, language, and ambiguity. There is a lot of good Christian fiction that has been published in the US, but commonly Christian fiction deserves a lot of its scorn for being trite and overly neat. (If you haven't read Reading Evangelicals: How Christian Fiction Shaped a Culture and a Faith by Daniel Stillman, I recommend it.) My favorite Christian fiction is works by British authors like Susan Howatch or Spufford, or books that deal with faith but are published by secular publishers like Marilynne Robinson or Madeline L'Engle. Some Christian publishers have published excellent fiction like the Back to Murder series, but they are rare and often do not sell well.

Spufford is telling a moral story, although not one that is wrapped up with a bow, and where everyone gets there just rewards. Yes, some gain wisdom with age and glimpse the meaning of life. But there is also hardship at the end of life. Parents cannot solve every problem of their children or grandchildren. Sometimes kindness is repaid with cruelty. Some people gain years, but not wisdom.

I listened to Light Perpetual as an audiobook. This is a book that I look forward to picking up a print copy and slowly working my way through again to see what I may have missed on my first reading. I suspect there is more there than what I got the first time and that a second reading with be worth the effort.

Light Perpetual: A Novel by Francis Spufford Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

So many excellent sentences - Ben reaching for a cigarette is my favorite, but lots of excellent stopping points. Not sure if it really does what it set out to do, but I enjoyed the ride.

There's some wonderful writing in this novel. Some individual stories that stand out. But I most struggled with the point of this novel.

The premise is simple, this is the imagined lives of five children who were killed in an air raid during WWII. What would their lives have looked like in 15 years? 30? etc. For the most part, their lives are pathetic and sad. There's definitely a shot of realism to their stories, but not much hope. So is the author's intent to illustrate they were better off dying before they had to suffer? Or that living sucks?

And in the end, there was no clarity for me, as a reader. These characters didn't live these lives because they'd died. So what? And what if they had lived these lives? Why does this story need to exist? I think this novel would've been more enjoyable without that initial detail clouding everything that came after.