The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

From the Publisher

Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit partying, and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch tells the story of four Londoners-three women and a young man with a past-whose lives, and those of their friends and lovers, connect in tragedy, stunning surprise and exquisite turns, only to change irreversibly in the shadow of a grand historical event.

The Washington Post - Tracy Chevalier

… The Night Watch is a sophisticated, beautifully written novel by a writer who has reached her maturity. To achieve it, Waters has sacrificed some of the youthful exuberance that made her first three novels such a joy to read. While applauding her talent, I miss the romp.

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. Simultaneous release with the Riverhead hardcover (Reviews, Dec. 12). (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In this moody, atmospheric novel, Man Booker Prize nominee Waters (Fingersmith) moves past the demimonde of Victorian England to World War II and its aftermath. The lives of four Londoners-Viv, Kay, Helen, and Duncan-intersect as they cope with the war and their personal lives over the course of six years. Each character is trapped by past events having trouble adjusting to peace after so much physical and personal destruction. Viv can't move past a troubled relationship; Kay seeks a purpose in life after the heroism of driving an ambulance; Helen is consumed with jealousy for her lover (and Kay's ex), Julia; and Duncan, having spent much of the war incarcerated, remains in a prison of his own making. Waters's depiction of daily life during the shelling-the random deaths, privations, and breakdowns in social roles between class and gender-is vivid and compelling. Night Watch is structurally more complex than her previous works, but the astonishing period detail and focus on the forgotten corners of society remain. Highly recommended for all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/05.]-Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Time runs backward, and memory tightens its grip on the variously involved characters of British author Waters's unusual fourth novel-a departure from her highly praised historicals Tipping the Velvet (1999), Affinity (2000) and Fingersmith (2002). It's indeed a story of relationships, which begins in 1947 in a London rooming-house where sinister Mr. Leonard treats the afflicted using Christian Science principles, and from which boarder Kay Langrish, an ambulance driver during the recent war, wanders the streets seeking the woman she had loved and lost years ago. Waters skillfully draws us into the lives of those who orbit around these two figures: elderly Mr. Munday, and his dutiful young "nephew," ex-convict Duncan Pearce; Duncan's sister Vivian, stalled in a dingy relationship with her married lover; "Viv's" business partner Helen Givner, with whom she operates a matchmaking concern; and Helen's lover Julia Standing, a beautiful, self-possessed bestselling mystery novelist. We gradually learn how the death of Duncan's lover Alec Planer had set Duncan on a course of self-destruction, and also how virtually all the novel's women have at one time been involved with, yearned for and/or failed or betrayed one another. The strong emphasis on same-sex attraction threatens to reduce the book to something very like a manifesto. But Waters's mastery of period detail carries the day, and the work is further distinguished by several brilliant sequences: Mr. Mundy's slow, patient seduction of the helplessly vulnerable Duncan; Viv's botched abortion, performed by a sublimely creepy back-street dentist; Helen's panicked reaction to evidence of Julia's infidelity; and Kay's stoical labors during theBlitz, when she's partnered with another young woman who will not be "the one" of whom she dreams. A cut below this author's superb earlier books, but very much worth reading.

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