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Jun 01, 2008

Kate rated it:

I struggled with my rating on this one. It seems sad to give only 1 star to what feels like an author's greatest effort to date. And I did end up liking one of the characters a little.

Oh well.

Luckily, this book improved after the first 250 dreadful pages. But isn't that a long time to wait for improvement? See my earlier comment for the defects of the book's Part One (takes place in 1947). Part two, set three years earlier, is certainly less boring, but only because More...

6 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2012

Sabrina rated it:

Reading a Sarah Waters novel is like eating a pomegranate. Sweet exotic fruit. However, you have to be patient in order to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Mar 19, 2009

Julie rated it:

This is such a touching, sober and tender novel. The setting is London: the story begins in 1947 and works backward to end in 1941. The story weaves through the lives of a handful of women, some of whom had tedious office jobs, others the grim work of driving ambulances or sorting through the rubble of destroyed homes, but all bravely assisted their fellow citizens through the messy, tragic business of living in London during the war. After the war, these women seem without tether and are once a More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Lacey rated it:

I had this book pushed on me from someone in my building. I didn't really mind because I saw it was by Sarah Waters who wrote Tipping the Velvet, but I wasn't particularly excited to start this one. I finally cracked it open because said neighbor is moving out soon and I wanted to get it back to him before he left. Now I feel sad that I have to part with it.

I loved this book. It follows the lives of four people backwards through World War II. It begins post-war, in 1947, and you meet More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Sep 10, 2011

Misha rated it:

It took me an extraordinarily long time to finish this book. I could not get into it at first. On the top of it, discovering The Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R Martin diverted my attention further away from it. When I finally came back to The Night Watch and gave it another try, that's when I started to appreciate the quiet beauty of this book. The Night Watch is absolutely different from the other Sarah Waters books I've read - Fingersmith, Affinity and The Little Stranger. There are More...

7 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 04, 2009

Punk rated it:

Historical Fiction. I love the writing in this. Waters' prose reminds me of Margaret Mahy -- slow and lyrical, with surprising moments of whimsy. The story is filled with compelling characters and tracks the way their lives intersect, overlap, and diverge again.

I was less thrilled with the fact the book starts in 1947 London and works its way backwards to 1941. It's well done, but gimmicky, a perfectly ordinary novel made slightly mysterious with...whatever the opposite of foreshado More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 15, 2008

Gabe rated it:

The first section of the book feels it was over edited. The pace is faintly too slow because of being overly pregnant with descriptions which do not add any significance to the story. Some metaphors are forced at the last minute with hopes of magnifying a scene and it is painfully obvious. The characters feel to some extent stagnant for the first section of the book. Perhaps, Ms. Waters intended this as a plot device to show how the progression of time causes most people’s lives to dwindle into More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 01, 2008

Erin rated it:

I can honestly say I haven't read a book like this before, and that's a good thing. It was really engrossing, mainly because it was almost completely character driven, and the characters were very interesting. The story starts in 1947 in post-War Britain, then the 2nd half is in 1944, and then it ends in 1941 (basically wrapping up how these characters first met each other). I really have to go back and skim the first third of the book because now i will understand what's really going on with More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jun 01, 2008

Kristina rated it:

Stayed up late reading yet another Sarah Waters novel... Something about her writing helps me recapture the excitement about reading that has diminished somewhat since I've become an academic -- reading in a kind of fever, staying up late, etc.

That said, this novel (as other reviewers have noted) is quite different from her others. The plot is certainly not as fast-paced or full of "twists" as the earlier novels; the setting has moved from Victorian to WWII (which makes a More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 01, 2008

Jenny rated it:

London after, in the middle of, and at the beginning of WWII, in that order; I am awed by the beauty of the nonlinear storytelling of The Night Watch. It's a character-driven novel, and it was a breath of fresh air after all the plot-driven fiction I've been reading lately. There is something poignant about the way Waters works backward through time in this novel, the way the characters come intensely to life as they grow younger, as the reader sees who they are, knowing whom they will become. T More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2012

Helen rated it:

Normally when I'm reading I make notes as I'm going along to remind myself of things I want to mention in my reviews. I didn't make notes for this one, I couldn't bear to put the book down even to make brief comments, and I gobbled the whole thing up in just a couple of days. Although it doesn't have the appealing plot twists of 'Fingersmith', the book is constructed somewhat unusually in that the first section of the book deals with events in 1947, then we go back in time to 1944, and finally t More...

0 comments like

Aug 02, 2011

JChipol added it

After reading two of her last books, I find that I am fast becoming a fan of Sarah Waters’ writing. This novel is quite different from the last ones I read; it is a quieter, sadder book than its predecessors, but it is a very good one and one that grows on you as you read it.

The Night Watch's structure is a reverse chronology that recedes from the sad and exhausted ‘present’ of 1947, back through the bombardments of 1944, to the expectant apocalyptic atmosphere of 1941. This may seem like a gimm More...

0 comments like

Apr 20, 2010

Joyce rated it:

The Night Watch[return]Sarah Waters[return][return]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.[return][return]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 t More...

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Mar 20, 2009

Dwhren rated it:

I really enjoyed this book. It takes place in London at the beginning, end, and after WWII except in reverse order. The story involves a number of people most of them coupled in some way whose lives intertwine in various ways throughout the story. It took me awhile at the beginning to get a hang of all the characters because there are quite a few, but after that it wasn't a problem. The book definitely keeps you engaged because the story starts in 1947 and you learn things about what happene More...

0 comments like

Mar 05, 2009

Sarah rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 11, 2012

Jenny rated it:

A very good read. There are five main characters, and their lives are layered together before, during, and after the bombing of London in World War II. The novel works backwards, with each section moving the reader a few more years into the past, and this probably wouldn’t work so well in the hands of a less able writer. In most novels, we are told about the characters’ backgrounds, but in this novel, we live it.

The most interesting of the main characters is Kay, an androgynous am More...

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Feb 05, 2012

Rob rated it:

It's 1947, and lives are reaching out for normality after the dislocation of war. For some this is difficult, unable to replicate the adrenaline rush of falling bombs and saving lives. For others, the relationships which made sense in the unnatural intensity of the war years no longer provide security and satisfaction.

Sarah Waters' novel follows the interlinked lives of five people in these dismal years. Helen and Viv work in a dating agency. Helen lives with the sophisticated Julia More...

0 comments like

Jan 17, 2012

Kate rated it:

Oh my stars.. what a depressing book! And not depressing because of its setting – WWII London - oh no, that would be an expected, almost common-place sadness. I don’t expect sunshine and ponies all the time but this dreary parade of gloomy characters offer no insight, no philosophy and no hope to the reader. If you love someone they will throw you over, much in the same way that person you loved ditched you.... everything is broken, now and always. The End.

To her credit, Ms Waters w More...

0 comments like

Nov 15, 2011

John rated it:

The college library furnishing me with fiction affixes a pink label to the spines of several of Sarah Waters'books designating them as "gay" fiction. I'm not certain of the purpose of such labels--recommendation? deterrence?--but it is surely a disservice to this gifted writer and a distortion of her remarkable work to marginalize it in the category of "lesbian" fiction. Having greedily devoured "Fingersmith" and "The Little Stranger," I was already persua More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 30, 2011

Melissa rated it:

This one was okay. I don't mind the narrative device of progressively going back in time. At one point, in the first segment, Ms.Waters actually points to her device by having a character admit that they find people's pasts more interesting than their futures. I wish she had kept this in mind when writing the third segment. This section completely fizzled out for me.I particularly disliked the 'meet cute' of the straight couple. The second segment was good but it made me wonder why the Hell Viv More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 27, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

The Night Watch centers around four main characters - Viv, her brother Duncan, her co-worker Helen, and Helen's friend Kay. The setting is London around WWII. Told in three parts in a backward timeline, Waters opens with a look at these characters in 1947 and how they come out of the war time experience. Helen and Viv work together in an office as early predecessors of match.com. We see Kay alone and struggling to get back into life after the war. And Duncan is a companion for an older ma More...

0 comments like

Feb 01, 2011

Dagmar rated it:

A fast, but backward, moving novel about some lonely young people in London in WWII and it's aftermath. It starts in 1947 after the war and works backwards to 1941. There is much graphic description of what it was like to live during the bombings. One of the characters is a rescue worker and has some dramatic experiences. Another theme of the book is the experiences, acceptance and rejection of homosexuality, particularly lesbianism, among the characters and society. Learning how it ends and More...

0 comments like

Dec 08, 2010

Margaret rated it:

Waters starts her tale of WWII London in 1947, introducing several characters and showing us their situations: Kay, who's still obsessed with wartime and can't connect with anyone in the present; Helen and Julia, whose love affair is threatened by Julia's possible infidelity; Viv, who's involved with a married man; and Viv's brother Duncan, whose life is changed when he meets again the man he shared a prison cell with. Then Waters works backwards: having shown us where these characters are after More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 03, 2010

Tocotin rated it:

I like Sarah Waters a lot (my favorite book of hers is Affinity), and I enjoyed this one, but can't say I was looking forward to continuing the reading (I read on the train, mostly).

It's not the slow pace that bothered me, or the excessive use of details. I think the author did a fantastic job describing the material side of living in wartime London - the food, the lack of cigarettes, the longing for luxury. It's not even that the story is sad and depressing and devoid of hope - and i More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 27, 2010

Teresa rated it:

The Night Watch feels like a departure from the other Sarah Waters books that I ve read. Both The Little Stranger and Fingersmith are more firmly in the tradition of the sensation novel. There are ghosts and robbers and shocking twists! The Night Watch, on the other hand, is more realistic. Much of the drama is ordinary human drama of jealousy, betrayal, desire. The rest arises from the extraordinary historical events that surrounded these characters.[return][return]And the history itself is fa More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 16, 2010

Fanny rated it:

This book made me feel a bit disappointed. I ended up liking the characters somewhat, but at the end of the day I felt like I had a big "WHY?" written over my forehead. The plot is almost non-existing and the one that actually is there provides to you no answers that I found satisfying enough to read 441 pages of this book.

I feel a bit fooled when you do not get to know what happened after part one, what the women made of their lives, what happened to Helen and Julia? What More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 26, 2010

Clarissa rated it:

Genre: Literary Fiction
How I read it: I own the book.

What attracted me to the book: I actually thought it was a mystery set in 1940s London so I bought it. But, it's not, it's not even close to a mystery...in the mystery sense of the word.

Who should read this book: Anyone who loves good writing but doesn't mind some really STRONG (suicide, gay relations, abortion, war...) subjects being discussed.

Summary (From Amazon): From Publishers Weekly More...

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Mar 31, 2010

Lucy rated it:

Each year in York there is a lesbian's book get together. I have been lucky enough to go to this a couple of times and Sarah Waters is usually there. This particular year she was just finishing her latest book 'The Night Watch', we headed off to the largest room within the walls of the York racecourse building, the place was packed and there she sat, looking rather nervous when faced with all these lesbian fans all in once place and she read from the first chapter of the book. We were all spell More...

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Mar 20, 2010

Amy rated it:

I really liked this book to start with and then I think I took too long to finish it up. The story involves 3 plots that intertwine and is told backwards. It starts in 1947, then a section taking place in 1945 and then lastly in 1941 (after the war, during the war and at the very beginning) in London. I do like that the novel told the story of those that lived through the war like everyone else (gay and lesbian characters, conscientious objectors, adulterers who made the decision to get an ill More...

0 comments like

Mar 10, 2010

Sheila rated it:

I read the blurb on the back of the cover of this book and found myself intrigued by the idea that it might end with its beginning. My only reason for not reading earlier was that the book is long and I’m in a lets-read-short-books phase. But the story is actually split into three parts, so I fooled myself into treating each part as a short book, and then I couldn’t put it down. I found I really did want to find out what a story told backwards would feel like. And I like the result.

The More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)