by Francis, Spufford is a deep, gorgeously written meditation on the nature of time and chance. On a Saturday in 1944, five children are killed instantly when a bomb falls on shoppers in South London. The novel takes each of these children’s lives and examines them intimately, jumping ahead in time to imagine the individual futures they lost in an instant. Spufford’s novel is experimental yet character-driven and depicts the beautiful, ordinary preciousness of life at every moment.