2 . 18 . 21
Now and then when I am absorbed in lists of forthcoming books, whether in the delicious catalogues of university presses (now likely to be digital only, alas) or in the pages of
Publishers Weekly or in some other source of bookish intelligence, a strange thought pops into my head: Books will continue to appear after I am dead. (Perhaps in heaven I will receive a special dispensation. . . .)
In any case, at the moment, I am still here in this fallen but nonetheless beguiling world, still (mostly) in possession of my “faculties.” There are so many books to instruct and divert us, miming Creation itself in their gratuitous abundance.
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I May Be
Backroom Boys, charting the overlooked achievements of British scientists; the âstrangely noveloidâ
Red Plenty, about postwar Soviet economics; and
Unapologetic, his lively apologia for religion and riposte to the ânew atheismâ of Richard Dawkins and co. If such an eclectic writer could be said to have a niche, it was to make nerdishness interesting. Then at 52 he published
Golden Hill, a glittering take on the 18th-century novel, set in New York, which was the surprise hit of 2016, winning him a Costa first novel award and an enthusiastic new readership. Now Light Perpetual, which, after that explosive beginning, follows the lives (had they lived) of five Londoners from the second world war to 2009, looks set to be one of the stand-out novels of this year.
Francis Spufford’s dazzling debut novel, Golden Hill (2016), opened with a ship approaching colonial New York in November 1746 with seemingly interminable slowness. Light Perpetual, its keenly awaited