The Night Watch

Book Review

Sarah Waters

The Night Watch is Sarah Water's fourth novel, and marks a departure from her usual Victorian subject matter. It is a brave choice for a writer to take such a deliberate step away from the very material which won her many fans and garnered heaps of praise from reviewers and much sought-after spots on the Booker and Orange Prize shortlists. Whether it was a calculated risk or not must remain with Waters and her publisher; for the reader, however, the risk has paid off. This novel should cement Waters' reputation as an elegant and consummate storyteller, regardless of the subject matter.

The novel centers around a group of young people in London during World War II. Its structure ambitiously moves backwards in time, beginning in 1947, and then tunneling backwards to 1944 and 1941. It is an unusual approach, but one that Waters deftly manages.

In 1947, we meet Kay, a bright, mannish young woman who lives in an upper floor in Mr. Leonard's house. She roams the streets of London , and lurks in the cinemas for hours, in a state of furtive desperation.

Duncan escorts Mr. Mundy, or Uncle Horace, to Mr. Leonard's house on a weekly basis, so that Uncle Horace can receive Mr. Leonard's own particular brand of “medicinal treatment'” – the laying on of hands and peculiar administration of vocalized affirmations designed to heal Uncle Horace's afflictions – in the manner of Mary Baker Eddy.

Duncan is an old man living in a young man's body, voluntarily living in a stultified, passive world, beyond time or age, with Uncle Horace. He works at a candle factory, and holds himself apart from his more uproarious and carefree co-workers. His is an almost solitary life.

Helen works at a matchmaking agency with Duncan 's sister, Viv. Each woman guards her own secret – Helen, that her roommate Julia is, in fact, her lover, and Viv, that she is involved with a married man. Nonetheless, they work together companionably, attempting to pair up London 's lonely and brokenhearted.

Helen's partner, Julia, is a writer of some renown, producing crime fiction. A London radio producer, Ursula Waring, takes Julia under her wing and publicizes her work on her radio show. Helen is intensely jealous of their relationship, and frequently obsesses over whether or not Julia is cheating on her. This feeling is irrationally fed by Helen's belief that she is, in some vague way, unworthy of Julia's love.

After establishing the characters' loves, labors, and liaisons in 1947, following the war, Waters shifts backwards in time to 1944, when London was on the perpetual verge of attack, or recovering from the previous one. Interpersonal relationships are shifted, revealing how the various characters meet, shedding light on their past histories – also revealing Waters' mastery of foreshadowing, the dropping of subtle clues in the first section of the novel.

The novel jumps back once more, to 1941, and in this section, Waters reveals key scenes that further explain the idiosyncrasies of her characters and the coincidences they find themselves in.

It is a testament to Waters' skills as a storyteller that she is able to pull off the feat of a tale that moves backwards in time. Ordinarily, readers want to know what happens next – is there a “happily ever after” for the characters they have grown to care about? In The Night Watch, the reader never learns about what happens to the characters after 1947. They don't get the “what next;” it is left to their imaginations. Instead, they get the “why.” Delving into each of the characters' intertwined pasts, Waters shows the reader why the events in 1947 came to pass as they did. With other authors, this might seem like a pointless exercise, but not with Sarah Waters.

Sarah Waters' impeccable research skills are also on display with this novel, though perhaps this took a bit more work since she couldn't simply draw on her years as a graduate student in Victorian studies. Walls are “done in lincrusta, painted a glossy chocolate brown.” Mr Leonard owns a “luster bowl, very beautiful, with a design of serpents and fruits.” Authenticity is complete, right down to the characters' lingo. Reggie asks Viv, “Have you gone barmy?” Viv's friend Betty tries to get her to go to a military party being organized by a friend, Jean, and Jean describes the event by saying, “All those boys are after is a few swell-looking girls in tight sweaters.”

It's not surprising that every one of Sarah Waters' previous novels have been made into movies. Her controlled handling of plot, minute attention to detail, and keen eye for visualization, all contribute to the sense that the reader is right there in the action, savoring every nuance as the story unfolds ahead (or in this case, backwards). It seems almost guaranteed that The Night Watch will be made into a movie as well.

This novel is a magnificent achievement, and is perhaps Waters' finest work to date. It should secure her a spot on the 2006 Booker Prize shortlist, and hopefully will win many new fans of her work.

“…The wood surprised Kay, even now: in the days before the war she'd imagined that houses were made more or less solidly, of stone – like the last Little Pig's, in the fairy tale. What amazed her, too, was the smallness of the piles of dirt and rubble to which even large buildings could be reduced. This house had three intact floors to it, an hour before; the heap of debris its front had become was no more than six or seven feet high. She supposed that houses, after all – like the lives that were lived in them – were mostly made of space. It was the spaces, in fact, which counted, rather than the bricks.”

“…It was rebuilt by Wren, like most of these churches, after the Great Fire of 1666. But they say that his daughter, Jane, helped him to design it. She's supposed to have gone to the top to lay the last stones, when the mason lost his nerve. And when they drew away the scaffolding, she lay down there, to show her faith that the tower wouldn't fall… I like to come here. I like to think of her making her way up the tower steps, with bricks and a trowel. She couldn't have been at all delicate, yet the portraits of her have made her out to be pale and slight…”

“To whom it may concern. If you are reading this, it means that we, Alec J.C. Planer and Duncan W. Pearce, of Streatham, London , England , have succeeded in our intentions and are no more. We do not undertake this deed lightly. We know that they country we are about to enter is that ‘dark, undiscovered one' from which ‘no traveller returns.' But we do what we are about to do on behalf of the youth of England , and in the name of Liberty , Honesty , and Truth . We would rather take our own lives freely, than have them stolen from us by the Pedlars of War . We ask for one epitaph only, and it is this: that, like the great T.E. Lawrence, we ‘drew the tides of men into our hands, and wrote our will across the sky in stars."