The Night Watch [BARGAIN PRICE] (Paperback)

by Sarah Waters (Author) "So this, said Kay to herself, is the sort of person you've become: a person whose clocks and wrist-watches have stopped, and who tells the..." (more)
Key Phrases: Miss Chisholm, Ursula Waring, Miss Gibson (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Waters begins Night Watch at the end of her tale in 1947 and works her way backwards to 1941. Since she ensures that characters don't spoil the freshness of earlier events by leaking important information, the first part includes a series of conversations that coyly allude to the characters' pasts and make the narrative slightly difficult to comprehend. The feat of entering this tale aurally is compounded by having to follow three separate narrative lines, which Waters later connects with clever Dickensian precision. Juanita McMahon performs the work persuasively. What she lacks in vocal range, she makes up by endowing characters with accents and speech patterns to reflect distinctions of social class. She gives the character Kay's voice such deep Dietrich-like sexual innuendo that one wonders why her lovers abandon her. Recorded Books politely reminds listeners which disk they have started and repeats the last sentence of the previous. Both are welcome features. Despite the initial challenge, Night Watch is a skillfully written historical account of love of all persuasions trying to survive the dark prospects of London during the blitz.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From The New Yorker
In the fall of 1947, an androgynous woman walks aimlessly through the scarred streets of London, adjusting her cufflinks. An ambulance driver during the Blitz, she now does nothing more dramatic than go to the cinema, arriving midway through a film and watching the second half first—"People's pasts, you know, being so much more interesting than their futures." Likewise, this historical novel begins at the end and moves backward, tracing the lives of its characters from peacetime Britain to the early years of the war. The centerpiece of the book is set in 1944, when the characters come fully alive, creeping through blackout London—an apocalyptic landscape of rubble and ash, searchlights and fires. Waters, acclaimed for her Victorian-era romps, has done meticulous research, and renders wartime scenes with unnerving authenticity.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (September 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594482306
• ASIN: B000P29HYI
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (85 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,876 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Women in Wartime, November 23, 2006

By	Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Night Watch (Hardcover)

"We never seem to love the people we ought to; I can't think why." These words, spoken by one of the central characters near the end of this sensitive book, might well serve as the epigraph for the whole. As a love story, it is passionate and true, but untidy because it is true; the truth and awkwardness go hand in hand, both beautifully reconciled by Sarah Waters' unusual narrative method. The novel traces the changing emotional relationships among a group of women (plus a few men) whose lives intersect in London during the two main periods of the Blitz, in 1941 and 1944. So completely do we get to know these characters that it is tempting to talk about them as though already conversant with their backgrounds. But one of the joys of Sarah Waters' storytelling is the manner in which she reveals information piece by piece, starting after the War and working backwards. It would be a shame to spoil this pleasure for a new reader.

But one can at least quote the opening sentence: "So this," said Kay to herself, "is the sort of person you've become: a person whose clocks and wrist-watches have stopped, and who tells the time, instead, by the particular kind of cripple arriving at her landlord's door." The year is 1947, and Kay appears as a casualty of war, living alone in a declining area of South London, in a poky flat in the house of a faith healer. Yet we shall soon glimpse a different Kay: a woman of elegance and style, performing almost daily acts of heroism in her wartime work, and responsible for many of the epiphanies of grace which illuminate this story of a dark period.

The book has three sections: the first, set in 1947, is 175 pages in the paperback edition; the second, set in 1944, is the longest at 290 pages; the third, set in 1941, is only 50 pages. Reading it is rather like going to the movies in those days, picking up in the middle of the feature, then watching the program round again to discover how it all began. It has the advantage of heading towards two different kinds of ending simultaneously: there is the ending of each chronological section, and there is the ending of the book as a whole. The endings in the 1947 section are mostly hopeful but never pat, all utterly believable, and untidy as true things generally are. This is mostly the case with the 1944 section as well. Two of the three short episodes in the concluding 1941 section, however, are bright as a button; descriptions of how the characters first met, they are crisp and compact because they shine with possibility unshaded by subsequent events. The third 1941 episode describes an event that has been glimpsed as a shadow over in the life of the main male character, Duncan, now brought into the light for the first time. If there had been any doubt as to the wisdom of Waters' narrative method, the bracing cocktail of these last fifty pages triumphantly dispels it.

But no matter how she chooses to tell it, I would read any Sarah Waters novel for her portrayal of women. There is a reality to these women that is rare even among female writers. We share the author's understanding of their social lives, their work, their friendships deep or casual, their emotional needs, even their bodies. It is no surprise that most of the relationships in this love story are lesbian ones. But I found none of the difficulty I encountered with the homosexuality in Alan Hollinghurst's THE LINE OF BEAUTY (another recent Man Booker finalist), because the relationships that Waters describes are all emotional ones first, and her rare descriptions of physical sex are the natural outcome of an intimacy of the feelings. Even reading as a man, I don't find myself watching the characters from outside (still less with any prurient fascination), but experiencing with them as I recall the emotional roller-coaster of my own youth.

I called this a love story, and it is. But looking back at it, I feel it is very much more a friendship story, set against a remarkably convincing portrayal of a particular time and place. Perhaps wartime pressures both highlight simple acts of kindness and make them more necessary. There are many such things in this book, extending to the minor characters as well as the major ones, and they give a richness to the intertwined lives that are portrayed in it. When these connections between one human being and another lead to love, it is almost irrelevant whether that love is emotional or physical, hetero- or homosexual. For this, as its unusual form makes clear, is a novel about beginnings, emotional journeys, and stops along the way. It is not to be confined by mere endings.

64 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Night Watch, April 17, 2006

By	K. Freeman (Apple Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Night Watch (Hardcover)

An interestingly structured account of several characters in 1940's London.

Waters starts with the present and works backward, illuminating the present situation, which appears innocuous and even shallow at first, by showing what happened in the past. The present gains depth, and even a touch of horror, as we see the jealous lover who betrayed someone to be with the person whose absences she now violently suspects, and the continued relationship between a woman and the man who abandoned her as she fought for her life.

It's an interesting plot structure, and the fact that it naturally lessens tension is somewhat made up for by the ugly depths that we learn lie behind our initial picture. Dramatic individual scenes keep the immediate interest level fairly high.

Having loved all three of Waters' previous novels, though, I was disappointed by this. It was impossible to sympathize with most of the characters, not because they were weak or venal (they were) but because they were boring. Their concerns seemed mundane and their personalities unremarkable. In addition, strangely precious dialogue had a jarring effect and made it hard to take the narrative seriously at times.

40 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite Masterpiece..., September 6, 2006

By	K. Johnson (Twin Cities, MN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Night Watch (Audio CD)

Wow! I wasn't sure what I was getting into when I picked up this lengthy novel, but my time was well spent. I read the unabridged version of the book on CD in my car during my long commute. It took a long time, but I found myself actually looking forward to traffic jams so I could sit in the car and listen longer. I even found myself sitting in my garage once I got home because I couldn't turn it off.

Waters introduces a wonderful cast of characters that I won't go into too much here because other reviewers have already done so, but a few notes are warranted.

My favorite character is Viv. She struggles with much as a young woman in love with a married soldier during the war. Her brother, Duncan, is also a constant source of worry for this enigmatic woman. She has my utmost respect in most areas, but has my pity in others.

Duncan started off as my favorite character, but I lost interest in his antics about midway through the book. His relationships with Mr. Mundy and Frasier are deep and disturbed.

Helen is a pathetic character you can't help but like. She's torn between Kay and Julia. She cheats on one and is cheated on by the other.

Kay is a lover, plain and simple. When she loves you, it's undeniable. At the same time it's smothering.

Julia is the aristocratic writer who is the epitome of "free" artist. She's my least favorite character because she seems extremely shallow and uncaring.

I appreciate the method Waters uses with timing in the book. She starts at the end and ends at the beginning. I was a little distracted at first because of this, but after I got recalibrated with each time shift I realized it was a great approach.

I read a lot. This was one of the best, highest quality books I've read in a long time. It reminded me of many of the literature classics I read in high school in college (yes, that was a long time ago, but I still remember!).

Don't let the sheer size of this one scare you. It's well worth the time required to get from front cover to back cover. Extremely highly recommended.