This is the second Sarah Waters book I have read. The first book I picked up is The Little Stranger, which I read a couple of years back for Halloween. So, I went into reading The Night Watch expecting something in the style of The Little Stranger, writing-wise, but it’s completely different. Later on, I read Fingersmith (review yet to come), which is completely different.
It’s pretty rare to find an author whose writing style varies so much from book to book.
Book Synopsis
This is the story of four Londoners – three women and a young man with a past drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching. Helen, clever, sweet, and much-loved, harbors a painful secret. Viv, a glamorous girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly, loyal to her soldier lover. Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances.
~ Synopsis from goodreads
The Night Watch Review
The Night Watch was an unusual read because it takes you in reverse order through time. The book’s first part is set in 1947, the second in 1944, and the third in 1941. So, we start the book learning where the characters end up but read on to find their journey backward to learn how they got there.
When the book starts, Kay (who, in my mind, is the main character) is moping and depressed. She spends all her time walking the streets of London, viewing movies in cinema halls, and is overall lonely and unsettled.
Duncan, another character in the book, speculates on seeing her:
Perhaps she was a lady pilot, a sergeant in the WAAF, something like that: one of those women, in other words, who’d charged about so happily during the war, and then got left over.
It turns out he is pretty close.
During the war, Kay drove an ambulance rescuing people trapped under buildings bombed by the Germans. One such rescuee is Helen. In 1947, she was in a seemingly unhappy relationship with Julia – a writer. Helen is madly and maybe rightly so jealous of Julia’s friendship with her publisher.
Helen’s glamorous colleague Viv is described as someone with a layer of grief, just below the surface. And Viv’s brother is Duncan – who seems the most mysterious of them all. At the beginning of the book, we learn that he has spent time in prison, but he doesn’t really seem like the criminal type, living a meek life with a mysterious “uncle.”
After describing all the characters’ mental states in detail, Waters then drops us into 1945 and then 1941 letting us learn how they got this way.
I both liked and disliked this reverse chronology. It worked for me because it was so very unusual; the feeling of just being dropped into these people’s lives without knowing anything about them was very nice. However, the ending that initially starts abruptly (I know I am not explaining this very well) didn’t work for me. I ended the book wanting to know more about what happens to these characters. I think a little epilogue might actually have done the trick for me.
In writing style, this book felt very Virginia-Woolfish to me. It takes the reader deep into the character’s thoughts and feelings without very much happening in the way of the plot.
The lack of actual things going on bothered me for a while till it stopped bothering me. Water’s description of wartime London is incredibly well-researched (the 1945 part especially is sublime), and her lovely writing just sold me on the book. I really got a feel for how things were like in London at that time. Her handling of feminist themes is also spot-on. I loved especially how subtly she brought out that war could be liberating for women. With men away, women finally got the chance to expand their horizons. Women like Kay would have just withered in the olden days, but she was appreciated and lauded in wartime.
Overall, this was a book that left me with a lingering feeling of melancholy. I slowly fell in love with the book. It’s a story about ordinary characters caught up in extraordinary times. It takes some amount of patience, though, as the plot is nothing much. It’s more a slice-of-life kind of novel.
i can see how that reverse narrative would be frustrating. Ive only read one Sarah Waters (Paying Guests) and that too was good on atmosphere so that might be her trademark
@disqus_gmoXW9BOB2:disqus I think she does. I’ve read three books of hers now. All three books had completely different settings and flavors to them, and she nailed all three.