Night Watch

by Susan Zettell

The stories in Night Watch , a new collection from Susan Zettell, delve deep into dark waters. Zettell looks unflinchingly at life's bountiful the loss felt by abandoned children, the sudden intrusion of sickness or death, the fierce love suffered by the mother of a troubled child, the journey away from home and the shining, difficult path of return. These are stories about rising to the surface, about bravely striking out and beginning again after loss. Zettell's handling of her characters makes us feel as if this is not fiction at all, but real life floating on the page. Her characters take us with them as they break through to light, and air, and sometimes laughter, finding their obstacles suddenly fluid as water, thin as a pane of glass, and changeable as a heart.

Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

Reviews

[Tim Covell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, poetic short stories, but too grim and depressing for me. The stories are similar and blend together - all are about women at various stages of their unhappy lives, dealing with poverty, difficult parents, useless partners, ungrateful teenage children, unsatisfying affairs. The stories are more observational than narrative, and sometimes the promise of narrative - a long passage about waiting to leave town on a bus, for example - does not deliver. We are never told about the outcome of that trip when the story picks up again, many years years later, though we can assume that it did not work out as the girl expected, like much of her life. Very CanLit, with all the good and bad that term implies.