Sarah Waters: The Night Watch

Sarah Waters, who wrote the Victorian romantic thrillers Affinity; Tipping the Velvet; and Fingersmith(shortlisted for the Booker and the Orange) departs from the 19th Century with this novel. Set in and after the second world war in London this book tells the stories of Helen, Julie, Kay, Viv and Duncan...in reverse. We start out in 1947, post war and progress back, section two is set in 1944 and the last part in 1941. As the story progresses (or regresses) the blanks start to fill in and you realize how inexplicably the characters lives are intertwined.

Both Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith have been made into mini-series by the BBC, and I would not be suprised, nor I expect would Waters if The Night Watch follows suit. I had feared that this book would read like more of a screenplay, than the previous novels. However, it's lyrical and tells a fascinating original story. It does contain the lesbian characters and subject that her previous novels contain, however it's not the main focus of the book, it simply tells the story of characters that happen to be gay.

This book was so wonderful that the last 25 pages took me an hour to read because I wanted it to last forever. Overall, this book was FANTASTIC and I really want you all to read it, because I want to talk about it. Seriously, this is probably the best book I've read in 6 months.

Interesting - I actually gave up on this book early on because I thought it was boring! Will have to look it out again...

I guess it does start out a little slow, I just got so into it that I forgot that.

I'm just reading Fingersmith and finding it good stuff.

I would never have chosen it, but a friend lent it me insisting I read it.
I'm so glad she did.

I watched Tipping the Velvet, but missed the TV adaptation of this.

I'm glad I did, it's so much better to read something before seeing it - than the other way round.

I shall put The Night Watch down TBR.

I just finished Affinity and will be reading more by her.

I thought Affinity was pretty good, I was wanting to know a bit more about many of the lesser characters but I think she did a very good job of building the relationship between the 2 main characters. The setting(a Victorian women's prison) was very detailed and my favorite part of the book. I just wish the lesser characters had been filled in a little more, especially in relation to the key characters, while much was hinted at there was never a sense of knowing for sure how they tied in.

Sarah Waters is booooring...

But the TV Adaptation, Fingersmith, isn't.

You might like Tipping the Velvet then...the TV adaption was NOT boring.

Very good

Hi there,
I just want to say that I also admire Sarah Waters and have read all of her works except Night Watch - I liked her books so much that I don't want to be disappointed by her last... could you tell me if you liked it or not? I liked Fingersmith best, really compelling and unconventional, especially as I didn't expect the lesbian turn at all and it was a refreshing surprise in that victorian setting. I hope she'll be appreciated more widely as she's often labelled lesbian fiction and I think this is limitating, as she's writing about love and about people, about universal things. I got my boyfriend to read Fingersmith and to watch tv adaptation of Tipping the Velvet: he found both very good, intelligent and entertaining at the same time - but he would never have read/watched them hadn't I insisted. A lot of potential readers/fans are driven away by these stupid clichés.
I just think Waters is good. Period.

Rather liked it, occasional longeurs aside; it's incredibly detailed, with some very well-written characters (I was initially a bit wary as she started off by describing then hair colour of the various protagonists, but then I quickly forgot about that and built my own images instead - and boy, does she make it easy to do that). One might argue that the characters are ALL the novel's got going for it, but... well, there's a bit more to it than that.

The reverse-timeline thing bugged me a bit at times - by the time I reach the "beginning" of the book I'm not sure of all the details of how it ended. But for the most part, I thought it worked very well - we see enough of who they ARE to want to find out how they got that way and be willing to do the detective work, even if I would like to know how it "ended" for real (which I suppose is a good sign - I care what happens to them). OK, granted, Helen wasn't my favourite; her defining characteristics are basically insecurity and jealousy, and I found it a bit hard to sympathize with her at times...

2, possibly 3, of the four main characters are gay and the word "queer" (in its proper meaning) seems a bit overused, popping up in every other sentence, but... it does serve a point in that the word "gay" doesn't get used one single time, IIRC. These were queer times, and it's almost so that the "queer" theme of the characters become a metaphor for the whole living-in-war experience - constantly hiding, constantly afraid to let yourself live, to poke your head out because you might get it blown off. As such, it works very well, and I'm sorry to say I must (just as I did with Brokeback Mountain) disagree with the standard complaint that "If the characters had been straight, the same story wouldn't have interested anyone" - because if they had been straight, it wouldn't BE the same story, would it?

The image that will remain with me, though, is Kay sitting in front of her smashed house, grieving a loss she hasn't experienced yet. Very powerful writing, though a bit dragging at times. But... let's give it 4, which might be 3 1/2 but I round upwards.

I read this last year, almost as soon as it came out and really enjoyed it, though maybe not as much as Fingersmith.

beer good said:

by the time I reach the "beginning" of the book I'm not sure of all the details of how it ended

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I found this a little difficult too, and I'm thinking that I might read it backwards next time to see if it makes any difference to my enjoyment of the book The detail is outstanding and seemed very well-researched to me and it has sparked an interest in the war period that no amount of 'history' could.

I read this on holiday and really enjoyed it. I was really interested in the characters and was pleased that they weren't necessarily likeable in the conventional sense - they were human with faults and all. It was the first Waters book I have tried so got Affinity out of the library today. Looking forward to getting into it, even though I'm no longer lounging around in the Portuguese sun!

I agree that it does seem to start out a little slow. I was baffled as to why I wasn't really getting into it, when I had so enjoyed her other books! (Well... maybe not Affinity so much).

But as it progressed I was sucked further into the novel, and by the the last few chapters I just didn't want it to end! I wasn't so sure I liked the whole moving back in time, as you'd know the end before the beginning. But it all worked out well.

I really enjoyed this book, despite the negative reviews I had read. It's probably not her strongest book (I think Fingersmith was much more compelling), but it's certainly an entertaining read, IMHO.

Fingersmith

England, 1860s. It's a simple plan (famous last words, there): smart con man finds wealthy but very sheltered and naive young lady in the country, with an inheritence that will only pay out when she marries. So he hires a young female pickpocket from London to pose as the lady's chambermaid and convince her to marry him. Once he's consummated the marriage, he intends to ship her off to an insane asylum and live happily ever after off her money. Except of course that this is a Sarah Waters novel, and so something happens that none of them had anticipated: the two girls fall for each other instead. And things aren't as simple anymore. And that's just the beginning of it...

I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed Fingersmith more or less if I'd read more of the English classics; it certainly likes to play with all of the classic tropes - moustache-twirling villains, mixed-up identities, grand houses and filthy dens of thieves, madhouses and libraries and of course the eternal dance between rich and poor, men and women (and women) and their fixed Victorian (and modern) roles. The latter, especially, Waters is happy to deconstruct.

The overexposure of women to literature breeds unnatural fancies.

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As it is, though, I enjoyed it a lot. Yes, it's a bit long as Waters' Victoriana pastiching gets a bit too overdone at times, but it manages to balance character drama - the kind where almost everyone does things that are completely wrong, but make a lot of sense given their situation - with a smart plot that twists and turns quite nicely. And it's even quite heartwarming (and -breaking) at times. Does that make me a sap? Maybe it does. But hey, I can live with that. It's one of those books you just gobble up and, despite 500+ pages, don't feel bloated afterwards but just nicely full, warm and still caught up in it after it's over.

Nightwatch was the first book of hers that I have read. I really enjoyed it. I thought she gave a vivid picture of London during the war. I did not know she had written other books with "gay" characters so was pleasantly surprised when I discovered them in her book. This book was memorable and one I am very glad I read.

Prairie_Girl said:

I guess it does start out a little slow, I just got so into it that I forgot that.

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I am guilty of this as well. Guess it deserves another look!

I ve just finished reading the Night Watch and I really loved it...but I have some questions and maybe one of u might enlighten me :
1 is Duncan really gay or just lonely?
2 what was he actually accused of?
3 is he having a relationship with Mr Mundy- the guardian?

and I would really have loved to find out more about how Kay ended up in that state.....about why Viv forgot Reggie after he'd ran away while she was taken to the hospital...what was kay's reaction when she found out about helen and julia.....hmmmm...many things i would love to find out ....