Read three quarters of this book and had to stop as it was starting to become a real drag. This is the first Sarah Waters book and I was disappointed. I highly recommend Pat Barker's regeneration trilogy if you want something you can really get your teeth stuck into. The night watch seemed flmsy and throw away and above all a bit borng! ( )

I think I'm a little bit in love with Sarah Waters. Even in this fairly radical departure from her standard fare, her careful eye for historical detail and ear for lyrical prose shine through. Rather than the Victorian era, Waters has moved to post-WWII London, following the lives of a loosely-connected group of women in the aftermath of the Blitz. While I wasn't crazy about the main plot device here (the book is divided into three sections, each moving backward in time), I was thrilled by Waters's deep understanding of women's relationships. Filled with wonderful, believable characters, devastating in its emotional impact, I was reminded more than anything of my favorite book, Mrs. Dalloway. ( )

In what was a departure for Sarah Waters after three (extremely popular) Victorian novels, this book is set during and around the time of WWII. It tells the story of four characters - Kay; a lonely woman, tired of life and love; Viv, a young beauty who is loyal to her Soldier lover, despite her reservations; Helen, Viv's colleague who is harbouring troubling thoughts about her relationship; and Duncan, Viv's younger brother who has been through some troubling times.

Sarah Waters employs an unusual plot device in splitting the book into three parts which move backwards chronologically. The first part is set in 1947, when England is recovering from war, and we watch the characters moving through their lives. The second part is set in 1944, at the height of WWII, and the first part is set in 1941. (However, each individual section moves forward and tells the events of a few weeks or months in the characters' lives.) The second and third parts start to fill in the blanks in their lives so that we discover how they came to find themselves in the situations they are in at the beginning (or the end) of the novel.

Every character - even the peripheral ones - is described wonderfully so that the reader really feels that they have come to know these people. They are decent characters, but each with their very personal and believeable flaws. 1940s London is also portrayed very vividly and beautifully, with the ravaged city almost being a fifth main character.

I have always thought that Sarah Waters is a wonderful and very talented novelist - this book serves to confirm my opinion further. I found myself anxious to know how the story turned out, and it held my attention completely. Highly recommended. ( )

Our reading group chose this book as one of our selections for 2008 based on (from what everyone could remember) the fact that the author has won numerous awards for her writing in England. So with that said, my expectation was high. The novel starts out in post-World War II England and with each section goes back in time. So in essence you know how the story ends at the beginning but it is the discovering of how the characters arrived there that makes for an interesting book. Other than this technique...I did not care for the book...I had no interest in the characters at all except for maybe Kay who was the most redeemable and interesting...a masculine lesbian who was a paramedic during the war. If this book wasn't to be read for reading group, I would have not finished it. ( )

Sarah Waters weaves together several stories to create a well-paced novel filled with memorable characters. ( )

Moving back through the 1940's, The Night Watch tells the stories of Londoners Kay, Viv, Duncan & Helen.

Not only is The Night Watch told in a fascinating and unique way but Sarah Waters is able to create characters that are truly intreguing and leave the reader wanting to turn just one more page in a bid to unravel a little bit more information about their lives. ( )

In The Night Watch, Sarah Waters signals an ambitious leap forward via her use of reverse chronology and the relatively complex intermingling of her characters lives. Her efforts were rewarded handsomely, earning places on the Man Booker and Orange Prize shortlists. Having just devoured the book in a couple of late-night sittings, I'd have to agree the recognition was well deserved.

Waters' cleverly interwoven threads mesh together to create the stories of five young Londoners during World War Two. I found myself most intrigued by the Kay-Helen-Julia story; the sections about the young prisoner Duncan were somewhat dull by comparison. Yet I can easily imagine that for some readers the reverse would be true. Overall, The Night Watch was an engaging, thoughtful and subtly sexy book - what in years to come will be known as "vintage Waters". ( )

Ik vond dit een prachtig boek. Mooi geschreven (goed vertaald) en erg goed dat het verteld werd van 1947 naar 1941. Dat bracht een speciale spanning met zich mee. ( )

Sarah Waters has created a very moving, and erotic, tale of how several lives are interwoven. The setting is in London during World War II and traces backwards how a small group of people came to be associated with each other. My previous exposure to Ms Waters’ was through film adaptations of two of her other novels, Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet, so I was not surprised that she continues her theme of love between women, but I was delighted to find her prose very delicate and fluid.

One unsettling aspect of the book is the author does not treat time in a strictly linear fashion, she bounces around from post WWII, to the middle of WWII and then to the beginnings of WWII. Within each era, time does flows in a forward direction, but the jumps backward are abrupt. Once the narrative begins again, however, the reader is quickly oriented to where you are and becomes immersed in the detail. This trick of chronology helps heighten the action of the characters and works very effectively on the reader.

I mentioned this is an erotic story, but the eroticism is secondary to the real love, and betrayal, between the main characters. We also learn that not all love translates to a physical act, either. There is a friendship between two of the characters, Duncan and Alec, which is revealed as love, yet it is not the physical love we are expecting to have occurred between them, yet it is not totally platonic either. To say more would spoil one of the twists in this plot.

With the extreme character development Sarah Waters has imparted to her protagonists, this novel is elevated above a novel of erotic love. The sex, while relevant to the story, it is secondary to the underlying relationships of the characters. If you are looking for a read full of cheap thrills, this is not your novel. If you are offended by same sex love scenes, this is not for you either. If you are still with me, try this for something seriously different. It is a deep story of a very trying time and shows how the many aspects of friendship will get someone through those trying times. Well worth the reading. ( )

My first Sarah Waters book. I'd heard good things about her work so I'd been meaning to pick up one of her books. Not too long ago I saw this on the buy two get the third free table at BAM so of course I went for it. I can't resist a good sale, especially when I happen upon books that I want.

My first impression of Sarah Waters' writing is an overall positive one. Half-way through reading The Night Watch I surfed the web and came across a quote from an interview where she states that this book was much less tightly plotted than her previous works. The plot itself clicked very well, though the formatting was kind of strange. The quote makes me raise my eyebrows a little--I mean, if this is an example of a book "not tightly plotted" I would love to see how intricate her others works are. I did notice a few holes, though now that I think back I can't recall anything specific so they must not have been very important.

I mentioned the formatting--there are three parts in the book. The first documents events in 1947, the second in 1944, the third in 1941. So the story moves backwards and the reader is left wondering how post-war events came to be and how all the characters are connected. Not everyone will like this styling, but I found it original and enjoyable.

My favorite part of the story was the way Waters described the era. She gave it flavor and really brought the 1940s alive. It's set in London, and I'd not yet read a WWII book set in London so there was the added bonus of a fresh perspective.

If I were to find fault with one thing it would be the characters. As rich as Waters' descriptions were, I felt like everything came to life except the people I was reading about. There were glimmers of dimension in a few of them but they never reached their full potential.

Actually, that's not true--if one of them got close to reaching their potential it was Viv, and I actually enjoyed reading about her. I found a casual interest in Duncan and Kay at points. (She never started being interesting until the end of the story--for a while she was just there.) I never cared at all for Helen or Julia.

But I'm planning on picking up another Sarah Waters book soon--probably Tipping the Velvet. I've been hoping to read more Victorian novels and I'm hoping she's done as good a job with this era as she did with the WWII years. ( )

Really mixed responses to this book from our group. One of us rated it 3/10, another 9/10. Those who disliked it found it depressing - led to a discussion, do we prefer to read 'happy' books? It was well written and some appreciated the writing. One of us thought it was brilliant. Good descriptions of the blitz. ( )

Extraordinary, exhilarating, marvellous. I tore through it in two sittings, desperate to peel back all the layers and reach the heart of the story. Echoes of my favourite poem, "Little Gidding", with its doves descending, its tongues of fire, and its beginnings that are ends.

And now there is the pleasure of rereading, to work out how this magnificent book locks together. ( )

The opening pages introduce you to an intriguing array of characters, including: Kay, who seems to have no purpose in her life and lives in a building that seems liable to collapse at any time; Mr Mundy, who receives a strange kind of counseling designed to help his arthritis (from a man in Viv's building); and Duncan, who tells people that Mr Mundy is his uncle, though he isn't. Gradually, Walters establishes four main characters, Kay, Helen, Vivienne and Duncan (Viv's brother), each of whom seems to be suffering in some way that is connected to their past. The connections between them all are not immediately clear, and in fact are often tenuous, even where they should be strongest - Viv and her brother lead almost totally separate lives, besides an obligatory weekly visit.

The interest in the first part of the book is found in wondering how these characters are connected and why they are suffering. The problem is that the novel becomes quite fragmented since the stories really unfold almost totally independently of each other, and tell of such different characters and events that you could get frustrated hearing about Helen and her lover Julie when all you really want to know is why Duncan is so panicked by meeting someone from his past who knows him and Mr Mundy.

The issue of why these characters suffer begins to be addressed when a major time shift occurs: the novel begins in 1947 but is divided into three sections, set in 1947, 1944 and 1941 respectively. This allows us to discover the reasons for each character's current situation and quite quickly reveals some significant changes and events, although Duncan's full story is not revealed until the final section. This is the most engaging section of the novel as each character struggles through battle-torn Britain, trying to hold their lives and relationships together.

The final section of the novel is very short, allowing only one glimpse into each character's past. This denies the reader as easy resolution: you have to return to the first section to remind yourselves of the characters' futures and consider whether their final positions are hopeful or dreadful.

Personally, I would have preferred a return to 1947, or even a shift further forward in time to see how the characters are coping several years after the war, but Walters does allow the reader enough evidence to finally judge the characters. The third section helps to create a real sense of empathy with several of the characters as we know how their hopeful beginnings will turn to ash and ruin.

Waters has been criticised by some for including several unnecessary helpings of lesbian sex, which I do agree with to a certain extent. However, most of the scenes do allow the reader to draw some conclusions about the relationships between the characters, and only one sexual scene, set in a prison, struck me as being truly gratuitous.

My bigger concern was the graphic description of two events in the novel. One in particular was described at such length and made me feel so queasy that I had to take a few breaks from reading simply to settle my stomach. Although it is realistic and artistically valid, it is difficult to read and I almost felt that I would have liked the novel to come with a warning!

While mentioning realism, I think it worth noting that this is what Walters does best. However irritating some of the characters may be at times, I found them fully convincing, and even when they commit their most melodramatic actions, I would defy anyone to question the veracity of their experience. In particular, one scene in which a character waits with increasing anxiety for her lover to return from (what she suspects) is an illicit liason, her thoughts and actions are truly human.

Waters also draws a very convincing portrait of wartime London: the excitement and fear of being out in a blackout; the terror and yet the dreary monotony of the bombing; the thrill of driving an ambulance and the stomach-churning task of collecting parts of bodies. For this skilful portrait alone, the novel would seem to be worth reading.

And yet…I am reluctant to really recommend it. I did not find myself turning pages eagerly; I did not find the novel especially 'thrilling' or 'powerful' as suggested by the quotations inside the jacket. The characters and setting are well-drawn, the structure encourages empathy and irony, but on the whole the novel felt flat to me. Perhaps because it is episodic - it captures three short segments of each character's life - I felt it was more of an historical document than a novel. I could not have learned more about each character if I'd read their diaries, despite the numerous ambiguities. (We never really discover the truth behind Duncan and Mr Mundy's relationship, for example.)

So is it worth reading? Probably, yes: it is well-written enough to keep your attention and you may find the various plot lines more engaging than I did. Would I recommend it? On the whole, no; there are more interesting, genuinely thrilling novels out there that feel more rewarding, rather than simply slightly cleverly done. ( )

Sarah Waters utilizes a strict third person perspective to tell the story of four people in World War II-era London. Backwards. The story begins in 1947, where we learn how each of the characters ends up. We then move along to 1944, where we see how they arrived at the beginning/end. Finally, we finish off in 1941, where we learn how everything began.

It's an interesting approach, and one that works fairly well. Waters makes us want to know more about each of these people. We want to know where they came from, how they're connected, how they embarked upon these relationships that play such large roles in their post-war lives.

And she tells us, with some of the best prose I've read in a long time. Waters is a master wordsmith; she can take a simple, everyday thing and tell us about it in such a way that it becomes extraordinary. Some of her turns of phrase just floored me. The writing is phenomenal, and the voice fits perfectly into the time period. This feels exactly like a book about regular people living through Word War II ought to feel. What's more, she really does stick to the strict third person. If the characters wouldn't think about it or discuss it, we don't hear about it. This approach combines with the backwards plot to produce the sort of book that you just can't read passively. The reader has to pay careful attention so she can piece everything together for herself.

And here I am, rambling along as if I loved it. I wish I had - I really, really do - but the truth is, I'm rather underwhelmed.

The writing is gorgeous. The story is inventive. The trouble is, it's somewhat lacking in depth. I feel as though I've just finished a very long short story, not a novel.

I spent most of the book waiting for that wonderful, magical point where everything would crash together and wash over me. That point where I'd really and truly care about the characters and their situation.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I'd passed the 400-page mark by the time I admitted it wasn't going to happen. This was an intellectually stimulating book, but it wasn't an emotionally satisfying one.

Part of the problem is that the reader doesn't just want to know where the characters have been. She also wants to know where they're going, and Waters doesn't deliver on that level. We can guess at what might happen in the future, but there isn't enough here that we can make any sort of concrete hypothesis. And even though we get many answers as to what's happened to these people over the past six years, there are still plenty of unanswered questions. In some cases, yes, we can make educated guesses as to what's happened. In others, I felt like I needed more.

As I said, it's like a very long short story. There's some great stuff going on, but it's spread thin over the four protagonists. It's not nearly as satisfying as it could be.

I still recommend that you give it a go, especially if you have any interest in novels that employ nonstandard narrative structures; however, I'd urge you to look for Sarah Waters's other work over this one. FINGERSMITH, in particular, is absolutely fantastic, and she does some great stuff with the narrative in that one, too.

(A slightly different version of this review originally appeared on my blog, Stella Matutina). ( )

This is a magnificent novel of relationships set in London during WWII. The inner lives of 5 young adults are the real focus but this book is full of adventure, intrigue and history. What is it like to come of age during war time in a city where everything normal is suspended as the bombs relentlessly fall from the sky? The reckless and joyous behaviour which frequently occurs in young adults as they explore new freedoms and relationships is particularly intense where every party, every love affair could be their last. ( )

The Night Watch
Sarah Waters

In her 4th novel, Sarah Waters breaks radically with her first three books, in era, structure, and theme. The Night Watch is set against a 1946 London struggling to recover from the war; 2/3 of the book, however, takes place during the war itself.

Waters follows the lives of four ordinary Londoners as they cope as best as they can with the horrors of the war and its aftermath. However she does this most unusually by following them backwards in time; the book in three parts, starts in 1946 and ends in 1941. We learn about the lives of the four--three women and a young man--right from the beginning--or we think we do. Loss, heartbreak, obsessive love and jealousy, a dark past affecting the present--all are made clear, or seem to be, in one case through a brutal revelation by another of the characters.

Switch back to 1944, and Waters does a magnificent job of using the terrible daily struggle of Londoners to stay alive and, more importantly, stay relatively sane with some hope through the darkest period of the war. The Night Watch is named after the units, staffed mostly by women, that were sent out on call to give emergency treatment to victims of the bombing. Here we get a background--a surprising one--on the four main characters.

And finally, 1941, the start of the war. And the start of everything in the story.

As I finished the first section and started on the second seeing what was happening I wondered how in the world Waters was going to maintain any kind of tension. I decided that what she was writing, then, was some sort of psychological drama--that there would be no real mystery to it and she would simply develop the plot from the point of view of the characters’ own development.

I should have known better.

There are enough twists and turns, unexpected developments, to satisfy the most devoted reader of Affinity and Fingersmith--in fact, more so. Make no mistake, this is a sophisticated book. You see what the four protagonists are going through and you feel helpless--and then we're blindsided by the developments. Possibly the overall them can be summed up by something that Kay, one of the protagonists, asks, wryly and a little sadly, why can’t we love the ones we should love? That question hangs over the book.

The last line of the book is as good as they come.

For me, Waters took a radical leap forward with this book, not content to rest on her highly deserved laurels for her three Victorian-era novels. Given that she’s capable of such surprises, it’s hard to wait for her next exploration.

Highly recommended. ( )

Sarah Waters swept her readers away with a tale of love, war, betrayal and hardship in her historical novel, The Night Watch. Set against a backdrop of bomb-ravaged London during World War II, this novel explored the lives of four young people – Helen, Vivian, Duncan and Kay – plus their lovers, friends and acquaintances – as they coped with their daily lives on the home front.

Waters structured her novel using a backward timeframe, so that as each year unraveled, you learned more about each character and his/her secrets. The first section was from 1947, and admittedly, this was the hardest section for me to get through. The characters were introduced with very little connection to each other, but I got the sense that their secrets and relationships were somehow woven together. As the book progressed, Waters shined a little more light on each character and story, putting each piece of her puzzle carefully together. It was a brilliant story structure – one that only a talented writer like Waters could pull off.

Each character was developed into an unforgettable person – one you worry about, sympathize with and root for. The Night Watch is considered lesbian fiction, which does not make this a book for everyone, but I found the women’s relationships to be compelling and insightful.

This is my first book by Sarah Waters but certainly won’t be my last. Short-listed for both the Booker and Orange Prizes (and understandably so), The Night Watch was a fantastic look at the lives of young people affected by a terrible war – and how they made the best and worst of these times. ( )

I loved this book. Such a pleasure to read after the disappointing Iain Banks that preceded it. What a writer! I found this utterly compelling, not because of plot or suspense, but because the characters seemed so real. I read it over the course of a week, and often found myself thinking about the characters when I wasn't reading it.

It's written backwards, starting in 1947, then jumping back to 1944; then 1941. This could seem as much a gimmick as Banks's jumping around in time in [The Steep Approach to Garbadale], but here it works. When you meet the characters in the first section, you want to know more about what makes them the way they are, and just as in real life encounters, you gradually discover what happened to them in the past.

The writing is brilliant -- I really can't understand the reviewers on Amazon who say this book is dull, plotless, and badly written. Waters captures the clipped yet vivid style of pre-war writers like Rosamond Lehmann, or Mass Observation diaries like the wonderful [Nella Last's War]. She has clearly done her research on wartime London, without it being overbearing or clunky; it just seems like her characters' real lives taking place in front of her eyes. Some scenes are flinchingly vivid: notably one character's self-mutilation, and a ghastly account of the aftermath of a back-street abortion.

If I have any criticism, it is that the ending falls a little bit flat because we already know "what happened" (the middle section of the book is where most development takes place). And it's a pity that the only heterosexual relationship is so sordid and unsatisfactory (she even rams the point home with the entertaining account of how Viv and Reggie met!). And I liked Viv so much I hated the fact that she was still wasting her time with Reg in 1947 -- she deserved better! Finally, although Kay could be seen as the "main"character, linking all the others, I felt she was a bit shadowy; I never really felt I understood her.

These are all minor criticisms though; overall, despite the depressing natire of a lot of it, this is a life-enhancing novel. ( )

The characters in this book were well written and drew me into the story. The setting of war-time London (WWII) was fascinating and well rendered. However, I found it disconcerting that the book is written backwards -- you start at 1947 and work your way back to 1941. It was interesting to get explanations about the lives of the characters... like a series of extended flashbacks... But at the end of the book I wanted to read the first section again to see "how it all turns out." Disconcerting. But I can't say that it was more of the same or boring. It was an interesting way to write a novel, but it felt wrong after I finished it somehow.
That being said I really think that Sarah Waters is one of our premier writers today and I look forward to her next work. ( )

enjoyed this until just before the very end; the revelation of how Duncan came to be imprisoned rang a bit hollow to me, and disappointed. The reverse structure was well-handled and the interconnectedness of the characters seemed lifelike and did not strain.
Posted by catalpa at ( )

I loved the first section, then completely ran out of steam partway through the second. I enjoyed the writing but the reverse chronology didn't work for me at all. ( )

I knew this was a book about war before I started reading it but it wasn't until I heard Sarah Waters talking about the book and I started reading it that I realised that the main stories were set in 1947 although war was heavily present with the second and third main sections of the book taking place in 1944 and 1941 respectively and with the characters' experiences during and memories of the war heavily influencing their present. I enjoyed the book, particularly the structure, which, I think, contributed to the book staying with me after finishing it - you never quite got all the answers to the questions you had. It was my intention after finishing the book to re-read it fairly soon to see what relevant bits and pieces I missed in the 1947 section because I didn't know they would be relevant but I still haven't got round to it. ( )

There was much that I did really like about the novel. I like the way that the story moves backward in time. It opens in 1947. The scars of war are still apparent in the bombed out streets. Waters' create a chain of characters each carrying guilty secrets. The promise that we going to learn the answers propels us through the story, although it is not in the end completely fulfilled. (But then, isn't life like that?)

I particularly like the structure of the book - the way it opens in the post war years and then moves backwards to tell the stories of different individuals I like the almost accidental way their lives intersect. Many of the scenes take place at night when emotions are rawest : each scene is like a searchlight illuminating momentarily important moments in the characters' lives.

Waters' recreaction of the London blitz is excellent and I think that this is the first time that fiction had taken me there. ( )

Broken into three sections, reverse chronological order: London in 1947, 1944, 1941. In 1947 the characters are wandering around in a postwar fog and you don't really know how they relate to each other. This is the weakest section. I wasn't sure why I was supposed to care about them or even what the heck they were doing. All that is clear is that they are Keeping Secrets. It gets good in 1944. The questions raised in the first section are answered and the characters become more compelling.

What's really good about The Night Watch: Waters has a talent for describing emotional intimacies so that you really understand the effect that war, deprivation and constant fear have on the characters and their relationships. Also, I loved the descriptions of the war work that the characters do, and of devastated London, of imminent bomb threats. Recommended, but not as enthusiastically as Fingersmith, a much stronger work. ( )

I enjoyed this book, although the timeline of the story (told in reverse chronological order) made me feel as though I was missing an ending. I was very appreciative that the author included a bibliography. I always like it when historical fiction authors do this, as I am usually interested in reading some non-fiction of certain historical periods. ( )