Product Description

Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller. This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching ...Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret ...Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover ...Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances ...Tender, tragic and beautifully poignant, set against the backdrop of feats of heroism both epic and ordinary, here is a novel of relationships that offers up subtle surprises and twists. The Night Watch is thrilling. A towering achievement.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3993 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 506 pages

Review
'A stunning achievement' John Harding, Daily Mail'Brilliantly done ... the period detail never overwhelms the simple, passionate human story. It's a tour-de-force of hints, clues and dropped threads' Suzi Feay, Independent on Sunday 'A truthful, lovel

Suzi Feay, Independent on Sunday
'Brilliantly done... a tour-de-force of hints, clues and dropped threads'

Melanie McGrath, Evening Standard
'Sarah Waters's latest offering lingers on, long after the final page and its first, most fateful meeting'

Customer Reviews

Didn't finish it
I loved Sarah Waters other books and eagerly waited for this one. But whether it's me or the book - I just didn't care very much about the characters. It's a bravely written book but it's the third book.... where the author seems to get up more in the construction and research than the story.

I was very sorry to give up half way through and hope she's back to her excellent form next time.

Still Waters run deep
This was my first time reading a novel by Sarah Waters, and I was really impressed with her storytelling talent. The novel tracks an ensemble of characters during WW2, each one of them involved in an unconventional sexual relationship. The period and setting were vividly evoked, and the simple direct prose carried deceptively deep characters and incidents.

"The Night Watch" has a very engaging structure. It is divided into three sections, each one delving farther into the characters' pasts. I was surprised by how effective this technique was, as it probably made me more curious to find out what happened before than in a conventional novel where the author tries to make the reader curious about what happens next.

However, I felt that the novel's only major failing was that its "climax" - i.e. the stories' genesis - was the weakest of the three sections. It contained no major surprises when perhaps I was anticipating some quite startling twists.

Just superb
This is my first foray into Waters territory, and what a wonderful experience it was. At first I found the atmosphere a little gloomy and overcast, the characters rather macabre, but I was soon won over by the sheer brilliance of the writing. Waters ought to be used a paragon in all creative writing classes. The woman does not put a foot wrong. Her language, while never flamboyant, is so perfectly poised that reading her words is like watching a film, so exactly do they conjure up what she is describing.

The characters were so vivid, so unforgettable, so touchingly human, that I felt quite bereaved when I came to the end. But even more compelling was Water's evocation of wartime Britain, and London during the air raids. It was truly like being there yourself.

In short, quite, quite wonderful. Merits every superlative you can think of.