The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

The first part of The Night Watch is set in 1947, and the four main characters we meet are just getting used to life after the war. Kay, who was an ambulance driver, now roams the streets of London dressed in men’ clothes. Helen runs a match-making agency for those who find themselves alone or confused by how much their world has changed with the war. Her partner, Viv, divides her time between work, visiting her brother, and seeing her ex-soldier boyfriend, Reggie. And Viv’s brother, Duncan, who didn’t fight in the war, reconnects with an old friend from his days in prison.

That probably makes the The Night Watch sound a lot less interesting than it actually is. It’s a tough book to summarize, as there are several characters are storylines, all of which are equally complex and interesting. One of my favourite things about this novel (and believe me, it’s hard to pick) was its structure. It moves backwards in time – we go from 1947 to 1944 and 1941. This actually adds to its sadness, to its intensity. We move from the years after the war to its heart; we get to know the characters, and by the time we grow to love them we already know that things didn’t work out all that well for them. And suddenly it all begins to matter, and it breaks our hearts.

The Night Watch made me want to read more novels about women’s lives during World War II, about life in London during the blitz, about what things were like for those who couldn’t or didn’t want to fight. I’ve read quite a few books about the Second World War, but never from this perspective—which is funny, because war’s impact on ordinary lives is actually something that really interests me. Wars ruin lives is more ways than those that are usually recognized.

During the first third or so of the novel, set in 1947, we get the feeling that despite all the fear and danger and death, some of the characters actually miss the war years. This is a very human reaction, I think, though one that is seldom acknowledged. The women in particular went from being essential to being cast aside as redundant, and so they miss the clear direction their lives had back then. This is especially true of Kay. And this isn’t of course about war being necessary or anything silly like that. It’s about being or not being allowed to do things that matter to you. It's about being told you matter, and then being told you don't.

The story that affected me the most was probably Duncan’s. It’s only very near the end of The Night Watch that we find out exactly what happened to him and Alec; exactly why he was arrested. What struck me the most about that scene was how very young they sounded, how very young they were. They were boys, teenage boys, who had always being told they had to fit into a pre-made mould of manhood, or else they were worthless. I won’t tell you what happens, of course, but I will say that I had to put the book aside, I was crying so hard.

Once again, Sarah Waters shows how good she is at creating atmosphere – the bombings, the blackouts, the fear mixed with just a hint of excitement, the small and the big tragedies: it's all so perfect you feel you're there. There’s a scene with Julia and Helen out in the night during a blackout that has to be one of the most intense scenes I’ve read in a very long time.

And then there are the characters, all of whom I grew to love, and there are their feelings and relationships, which are captured so perfectly. She's a master at implying: I don’t know how she does it, but subtle emotional changes, complex feelings, unspoken things, invisible connections, they all come across so perfectly in her work. This is an intense, dark, and heartbreaking novel. Sarah Waters, I love you with all my heart.

A few of my favourite passages:

‘Get over it. What a funny phrase that is! As if one’s grief is a fallen house, and one has to pick one’s way over the rubble to the ground on the other side…I’ve got lost in my rubble, Mickey. I can’t seem to find my way across it. I don’t think I want to cross it, that’s the thing. The rubble has all my life in it still—’

She smoothed Helen’s hair away from her brow, watching for the stilling of her eyelids: feeling the rising of emotion in her own breast; and made almost afraid, for a moment, by the fierceness of it. For she thought of the little bits of bodies she and Cole had had to collect, tonight, from the garden on Sutherland Street, and felt the ghastliness of them, suddenly, as she had not felt it then—the awful softness of human flesh, the vulnerability of bone, the appalling slightness of necks and wrists and finger-joints…it seemed a sort of miracle to her that she should come back, from so much mayhem, to so much that was quick and warm and beautiful and unmarked.

That was all they had done; and yet it seemed to Helen that with those slight encounters the world had been subtly transformed. She felt connected to Julia now, as if by a slender, quivering thread. She could have closed her eyes and, with a fingertip, touched the exact small point on her breast at which the thread ran delicately into her heart and tugged at it.

This last one made me smile, as it’s an image she also uses in both Fingersmith and Affinity. She must like it, and I do, too. It’s such a good way of describing not only the pull of attraction, but also the sudden awareness of the other’s presence, of their every movement, that you develop when you’re falling in love.

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