Sarah Waters: The Night Watch
Latest Best-Seller from Author of Tipping the Velvet
With her latest novel, Waters proves that she can move away from the Victorian settings she has become known for, and with huge success.
Tipping the Velvet
When Sarah Waters’ debut novel, Tipping the Velvet, was first published in the UK in February 1998 she immediately made a name for herself with this brilliant yet controversial story of lesbian love (and sex) in Victorian London. The Daily Telegraph declared 'This could be the most important debut of its kind since that of Jeanette Winterson', another well-known British writer who isn’t afraid to depict physical love between same-sex couples.
Waters’ next two novels, Affinity in 1999 and Fingersmith in 2002, cemented her reputation but also pigeon-holed Waters somewhat, as an accomplished purveyor of lesbian love in Victorian times.
New Direction for Waters
The Night Watch, Waters’ fourth novel, was published in 2006 to almost universal acclaim, not least because it represented a new direction for the writer. The novel begins in 1947, and introduces us to four characters who will ultimately prove to have a connection to each other: Kay, Helen, Viv and Duncan.
The novel has a remarkably clever structure, as each section moves back in time, the final part of the novel being set in 1941 where the story begins. In the hands of a less accomplished author such a structure could prove confusing, but Waters handles it admirably, and allows us to work out some of the connections as well as keeping us guessing with other aspects of the plot.
London during the Second World War
The characters are convincingly rendered, especially that of the masculine Kay and her troubled relationship with Helen. Duncan is perhaps the weakest of the four, failing to match up to the strong females who dominate Waters’ novels. The depiction of war-time London is realistic as well as poetic, allowing us to imagine the destruction of buildings and of lives as Kay goes about her job as an ambulance worker:
“It was hard to see, through the darkness, but she made out the figure of a man, sitting on a step with his hands at his head; and a woman, lying flat and very still on a blanket or rug...his face had seemed black to Kay, at first; she’d imagined it covered with earth or soot. Once she’d shone her torch on it, however, the black had become brilliant red.” (1944: chapter 1)
Against this harrowing backdrop, the very human characters play out their turbulent lives in a “truthful, lovely book that needs no conjuring tricks to make you want to read it again” (Philip Hensher, The Observer). This comment says it all: gone are the gimmicky plot-lines of Waters’ earlier novels; in their place a touching and moving story of love and loss.
The Night Watch is published in the UK by Virago Press (2006), 503 pages, ISBN 978-1-84408-241-4. Visit Sarah Waters' website for more information on her work.
If you’ve enjoyed this book, try some other historical fiction: The Observations, Jane Harris; The Last Witch-Finder, James Morrow; The Winter Rose, Jennifer Donnelly.
