This is a beautiful novel, very much aimed at and very much hitting a distinctly postmodern kaleidoscopic target, with prose that occasionally literally took my breath away. The stated goal of looking at five lives (fictional lives, fictionally lost in a real event, fictionally given alternative lives) at the same handful of moments between 1944 and the novel's end in 2009 does make it really had to pull a single story out, though there are occasional interconnections if you pay attention, but it leaves room for Spufford to say things about London and England and Western culture and plausibly humanity overall; he makes glorious use of the space he gives himself. All the POV characters are deeply human, flawed on multiple levels, believable, plausible, different in their experiences and triumphs and regrets.
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