Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in South London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything's been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is incinerated, including five young children. Who were they? What futures did they lose? Letting history diverge, Francis Spufford brilliantly imagines the lives these five could have lived in a rapidly-changing Britain, becoming bus conductors and landlords, swindlers and teachers. "Something new and brave…. Spufford catches the voices and hopes of five not-dead working-class south Londoners, and the people who change and shape them."—Guardian (London)