The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

Riverhead Books, 2006.

Overview: Sarah Waters (author of Tipping the Velvet, reviewed and recommended here by the Lesbrarian) begins The Night Watch in 1947, in a London still reeling from World War II. The reader is introduced to queer women who drove the ambulances and re-housed families whose homes were destroyed in air raids, a sensitive young man who feels lucky to be working in a factory after a undeserved prison term, and his sister who suffers through an unfortunate affair, and watches their stories unfold in reverse chronological order, ending in 1941.

My reaction:  I really cannot say enough good things about this one! While it is fiction, Night Watch felt incredibly real--I was not surprised to find a bibliography of sources in the back. Heart-rending romance (which I am such a sucker for) abounds, but as much as I ached for the characters, the tragedy of Waters' London kept me reading as well. As you can guess, it's not a happy story generally, but there are moments of beauty, heroism, and all-too-familiar human frailty that filled me up even as I felt crushed by sadness.

On a more technical note, the reverse chronology was a brilliant authorial decision. I was actually so blown away by it that I started reading the book again almost as soon as I had finished it. (I admit that that was partially because I started it at work, and thought I might have missed details--which I had.) By finding out the unhappy "present" of the characters, and then going exclusively backwards in time, we learn exactly how they got there, instead of freeing them from their current circumstances. Like I said, it's not happy, but it's beautifully done. The little intersections of storylines that are thus unearthed throughout the book are enchanting; those chance encounters between characters who are relative strangers to one another before and after serve to turn London and its inhabitants into a sort of living tapestry.

One caveat: as you might guess from the time period it is set in, this novel has some pretty graphic descriptions of gore. Some of them really shook me, and while that is a credit to Waters' amazing writing, I figured it was worth a mention.

HIGHLY recommended.