Name: The Night Watch
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)
Author: Sarah Waters

About this book

Summary

Book Summary

A novel of relationships set in 1940s London that brims with vivid historical detail, thrilling coincidences, and psychological complexity, by the author of the Booker Prize finalist Fingersmith.

Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit liasons, and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch tells the story of Londoners: three women and a young man with a past - whose lives, and those of their friends and lovers, connect in ways that are surprising and not always known to them. In wartime London, the women work - as ambulance drivers, ministry clerks, and building inspectors. There are feats of heroism, epic and quotidian, and tragedies both enormous and personal.

Membership Advantages

Reviews
"Beyond the Book" articles
Free books to read and review (US only)
Find books by time period, setting & theme
Read-alike suggestions by book and author
Book club discussions
and much more!
Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
More about membership!

Media Reviews

"Waters's sharply drawn page-turner doesn't quite equal the work of literary greats who've already mapped out WWII-era London. But she matches any of them with her scene of two women on the verge of an affair during a nighttime bombing raid..." - PW.
"Night Watch is structurally more complex than her previous works, but the astonishing period detail and focus on the forgotten corners of society remain." - Library Journal.
"A cut below this author's superb earlier books, but very much worth reading." - Kirkus.

This information about The Night Watch was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own review

Cathryn Conroy

This Book Is Sheer Genius! Exquisitely Written and Absolutely Engrossing to Read
Brilliant! Simply brilliant! Exquisitely written by Sarah Waters in a highly creative and imaginative format—going backward in time instead of forward—this is a World War II story about the British home front and a group of young women who are trying to make a life for themselves as the bombs fall nightly on London.

Kay, courageous and stalwart, drives an ambulance at night to rescue those whose homes and shelters have been blasted. Helen, softhearted and resolute, works in a British ministry office helping people navigate the bureaucracy after they have lost their homes. Viv, who is having an affair with a married man, is the backbone of her family after her brother, Duncan, is sent to prison. Julia, a writer of murder mysteries, is tough but tender, and causes all sorts of mischief and havoc. Most—but not all—of the women have one thing in common: They are lesbians, falling in and out of love with each other in a time of great national horror.

The storyline is one that pulls you in and won't let go. It's emotionally riveting, packed with historical details, unnerving at times and spellbinding at others.

But it is the literary ploy of going backward in time that makes this book so special. It is written in three parts: 1947, 1944, and 1941. Within each of these parts, the plot moves forward, but when we read the second and third parts, we already know what is going to happen, much like seeing into the future. Still, we don't really because we don't know how it started in the first place, and herein lies the tension—and genius—of the book.

I became utterly engrossed in the novel because I cared so deeply for the characters. I wanted to know the motivations behind their successes and failures, what gave them joy and sorrow, and how it was they managed to still be happy in a time of great tragedy and fear.

This book is absolutely brilliant! Highly recommended.

Membership Advantages

Reviews
"Beyond the Book" articles
Free books to read and review (US only)
Find books by time period, setting & theme
Read-alike suggestions by book and author
Book club discussions
and much more!
Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
More about membership!

Author Information

Biography
Books by this Author

Sarah Waters Author Biography

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature and has been an associate lecturer with the Open University.

She has written five novels: Tipping the Velvet, which won the Betty Trask Award; Affinity, which won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday /John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; Fingersmith, which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, and won the South Bank Show Award for Literature and the CWA Historical Dagger; The Night Watch, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize; and The Little Stranger, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the South Bank Show Literature Award.

She was included in Granta's prestigious list ...

... Full Biography
Link to Sarah Waters's Website