The Night Watch
by Sarah Waters
★★★
This is my fourth Waters novel, but it deviated in a lot
of ways from what I've come to expect from her books. There's no vibe of gothic
mystery, instead it's more historical fiction. Set in London during World War
II, the story follows four main characters, Kay, Helen, Viv and Duncan. Like
the other three Waters novels that I’ve read, it’s extremely well written. The
setting is beautifully described; the characters are well-drawn, etc., but my
problem with this book lay in the plotting and structure.
We start after the war is done and everyone settled back
into their lives in 1947. We meet our main characters and they constantly make
vague references to things that happened during the war. Later we travel back
to 1944 when the city was being bombed to bits by the Germans. Kay is an
ambulance driver and rescues people after their homes are bombed. These scenes
were some of my favorite in the book. You could feel the fear and smell the
smoke as London fell into ruin around its loyal citizens.
Kay’s girlfriend Helen is a less interesting character
and one that seems indecisive about what she wants from life. Then there’s Viv,
a bright young woman who has gotten caught up in a relationship with a married
man named Reggie. The final character is Duncan, a young man serving time in
prison. We rotate between the lives of each character, learning tiny bits about
how they got where they are, but there are always unanswered questions.
The story moves slowly at first and it took me a while to
get into it. The author leaves us intentionally in the dark on quite a few
things that she mentions in the first portion of the book. As the novel
progresses things are slowly revealed. You supposed to hang in there and trust
that it will all be explained, but in the end I never felt like I got the whole
story.
By structuring the book in reverse chronological order
you remove a huge amount of suspense. When we move back to 1944 and then to
1941 at the very end, we already know who lives and dies and who ends up
together. There are obviously pros and cons to this unique method or
storytelling, but it does take the suspense out of certain events.
**SPOILERS**
A few of my issues with the book…
At the end we find out that Helen was already almost
killed in a bomb blast. If that’s true, why on earth would she refuse to go to
the shelter during future bombings? I would think that she would be the first
one in the shelter the second the alarm sounded!
Also, Duncan and his friend took suicide ridiculously
nonchalantly. It really bothered me that only one of the boys wanted to kill
himself it took him about 30 seconds to convince Duncan to join his suicide
pact. It was like a big game to them and I can't imagine two teenage boys
saying, “What do you want to do this today? I don't know let's kill ourselves.
Ok, sounds great!” Also, did I miss something, where it’s explained why Duncan
decided to move in with Mr. Mundy?
Viv’s story made a little bit more sense when you see how
she met Reggie, except she knew from the get-go that he was on leave to go see
his wife and their new baby. My real problem with her wasn't even how they met.
What I didn’t get was their ending. He abandons her when she’s in the middle of
a medical emergency and about to die. And yet we see in their 1947 section that
they are still together with no explanation. That made no sense to me.
**SPOILERS OVER**
BOTTOM LINE: I think the story really lost something in
the structure. The writing is gorgeous and I particularly love learning more
about this time period, but it was almost like reading the ending of a book and
then trying to go back and start from the beginning. Not my favorite Waters
novel.
** I do want to say that the audiobook version was
fantastic. It was read by Juanita McMahon and she was just excellent!
Pairing Books With Movies: I saw “The Imitation Game” the
day after I finished The Night Watch and I couldn’t believe how perfectly the
two aligned. Both focus on London during World War II. Both deal with how
homosexuality was viewed during the 1940s. I absolutely LOVED the movie and
can’t say enough about it. It was wonderfully done and I would highly recommend
it.
A bonus recommendation, if you aren’t already watching The
Bletchley Circle you should be! The first two seasons of the BBC show is
available on Netflix. It’s about a group of women who were code breakers during
WWII in London.
