Francis Spufford is a master of the set piece. His great skill is to breathe life into almost any scene. He spent the first 20 years of his career producing narrative non-fiction on eclectic subjects, as if testing his range: polar exploration, children’s literature, the 1950s Soviet economy. When he began writing his debut novel at the age of 52, he wanted, in his own words, to “throw in everything I liked, and then the kitchen sink”. The result, Golden Hill (2016), was a larky, lusty, picaresque caper set in mid 18th-century New York. It leapt from riot to rooftop chase to banquet to duel – with not one but two scenes of coitus interruptus.
At first glance, Spufford’s second novel, Light Perpetual, couldn’t be more different. It is, for the most part, a quiet, contemplative book about the imagined future lives of children killed in a German V2 attack in the Blitz. It is slow burning where Golden Hill was fast and impetuous; its action ranges across the second half of the 20th century as opposed to a few madcap weeks; and it has five ordinary protagonists in place of one extraordinary hero.
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