Autumn Reads...

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters- 5 stars *****

This was another course book, but unlike The Butcher Boy, I enjoyed this from the beginning and actually wanted to read on. What I particularly enjoyed was how the author created lots of different characters, and flitted between their stories, which eventually all interwined. This was successful as the link between each character was often very subtle and unexpected, so there were certain parts that genuinely shocked me.

It made a nice change that a book set in wartime didn't go into great detail about the actual war, as I find that this often bogs down a piece and diverges from the main plot. The focus was more on how the war affected each character, which I found interesting as it added much more dimension to them.

The style that the book was written in was lovely, I really like figurative prose and lots of description, and this was in abundance in The Night Watch (I had picked out two pages containing extracts I particularly enjoyed, but since I have now given the library book back, I don't have access to them!)

A technique I have not come across before was employed by Sarah Waters in this novel. The story begins in 1947, but then backtracks to 1944 and then 1941, so by the end although for the reader all the characters have become enmeshed, some of them have yet to meet in the time sense of things. I found this fascinating, as the suspense is still just as gripping despite us wanting to find out what happened to begin with, as opposed to what will occur next.

Although this book is set in World War II, the subject topics seemed like those often touched upon in more modern novels; lesbianism, abortion and suicide, so I really liked hearing about these issues within a different era, as I felt like I learnt things that I didn't know before, which I believe is always a good thing when reading. Unless you are a die-hard fantasy book reader,
or massively into sci-fi, I really think The Night Watch has the potential to be enjoyed by anyone, as there are so many different viewpoints and plotlines that it can affect a large number of different audiences.