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The Night Watch
by Sarah Waters
This historical novel traces the lives of seven characters from 1947 London backward in time to the depths of WWII in 1941.
Riverhead, 464 pages
03/23/2006
$25.95
ISBN: 159448905X
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
Historical Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Daily Telegraph Mary Wakefield
Perhaps Waters' secret, the sprinkling of monosodium glutamate over The Night Watch, is her absolute control of the pace - each strand of the plot is paid out carefully at the same speed, no rushing the boring bits, no favouritism. The characters are given equal weight and time, so that by the end of the first section you're equally gripped by all of them.
The Independent Michèle Roberts
The Night Watch is sharply and compassionately observed, richly coloured, and compelling to read.
The Independent Mark Bostridge
Here, nuance and lack of closure replace the plot-driven narratives, and while Waters remains an extraordinarily clever manipulator of shape and structure, the believability of her protagonists is enhanced by the fact that they are no longer mediated through familiar literary stereotypes.
Boston Globe Denise Mina
I decided that I'd better reread the book immediately and I thrilled at the thought; it's that good.
Library Journal Devon Thomas
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. [1 Jan 2006, p.106]
Publishers Weekly
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, lost in blackout London with only the light of their passion as a guide. [12 Dec 2005, p.37]
The Spectator Kate Chisholm
Waters takes us back in time, gradually sifting through these lives like an archaeologist on a dig trying to reconstruct the past. It's a clever device, efficiently accomplished, intriguing the reader so that you find yourself turning the pages as if in a thriller, your mind racing to solve the puzzles that Waters has devised. [28 Jan 2006, p.42]
Daily Telegraph Carol Ann Duffy
On reaching the end of the novel, it is impossible not to start anxiously again at the beginning. But this neither helps nor comforts. The Night Watch stays bleakly in the mind long after its rereading, underlining the growing authority of its author.
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Theo Tait
For some tastes, the whole project might be a little close to those blowsy middlebrow novels about strong women living through times of picturesque historical turbulence. But it works very well.
Booklist Kristine Huntley
Readers will be tempted to return to the beginning of Waters' elegant novel after turning the final page to fully appreciate the depth of the characters and their connections to each other. [15 Feb 2006, p.42]
Kirkus Reviews
A cut below this author's superb earlier books, but very much worth reading. [15 Dec 2005, p.1298]
Los Angeles Times Janice P. Nimura
The backward narrative isn't an unqualified success. It's tricky to keep straight the characters' intersections through time and space without a chart. It's also difficult to let the last section be the concluding one -- too tempting to flip back to the beginning and put the ending at the end.
Salon Laura Miller
Waters' view of the freedom is ambiguous. The novel never entirely busts out of its own conventions, out of melodrama's insistence that true passion must be forbidden and lead to catastrophe. Readers who follow her work will surely find this novel more sober and less piquant than her earlier ones.
The New York Times Book Review David Leavitt
Indeed, by the time we reach the end (or is it the beginning?) of this otherwise estimable and moving book, we know so much more than the characters that our knowledge dilutes the impact of what should be the most dramatic section. For all the vigor and intensity of its prose, "The Night Watch" leaves us with the sense that both the reader's experience and the characters' lives have been manipulated to suit the author's design.
The New Yorker
Waters, acclaimed for her Victorian-era romps, has done meticulous research, and renders wartime scenes with unnerving authenticity.
Washington Post Tracy Chevalier
The backwards structure of The Night Watch is its most intriguing characteristic, and also its Achilles' heel. It creates its own sort of reverse suspense, emphasizing the question of why rather than what happens and making us grow more knowledgeable as the characters become more ignorant.
London Review Of Books Jenny Turner
Waters grabs the clichés and transcends them. Like a skilled and lucky actor, she has found her own emotional correlative for the apparently distant experiences she is writing about.
The Guardian Justine Jordan
The Night Watch demands sticking power and at least two readings, but this finely nuanced, wise and generous novel more than repays such attention. Waters is an author to cherish, and this is probably her finest achievement yet.
San Francisco Chronicle Tess Taylor
It's just that the book, which is studded with such insights, in the heads of its characters, occasionally seems burdened by all the accounting for thinking that it's doing.
 The average user rating for this book is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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