Product Description
Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller. This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching ...Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret ...Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover ...Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances ...Tender, tragic and beautifully poignant, set against the backdrop of feats of heroism both epic and ordinary, here is a novel of relationships that offers up subtle surprises and twists. The Night Watch is thrilling. A towering achievement.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

This will be released at the 2009 BCUK Unconvention at the Melting Pot in Edinburgh on Saturday 4th July.

If not caught there it will be released sometime after 11am somewhere in Edinburgh city centre!

This book was chosen during a live book swap held at the melting pot on Saturday afternoon. I managed to steal it for the third time and thus it was mine to take home. It was fun to play the game and great to meet everyone!

I was so disappointed with this book, as I have read and enjoyed other books from the author. I gave up about a third of the way through because it's very dull, slow and reading it was becoming a chore.

I enjoy the social history it provides, the little things like the war posters, how women's roles changed in the war, the way tea was made or sandwiches produced etc. But the characters seem rather uninteresting.

The books is split into sections, with are each one year long, and the book is written backwards (you start reading in 1945 and finish in...well, I don't know because I gave up).

In the first year I enjoyed reading about Viv, but Duncan's friend (Francis??) seemed manipulative and annoying and I disliked him immediately, the rest are just dull.

And thinking about the backwards writing, if it had been written in the conventional way the chaper set in 1945 would be redundant as nothing happens. That would take the book from being 500 pages to 300 with a quick editing decision.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:





This is going to Da wildchildz as a secret santa gift. I hope you enjoy 2010 and the year is full of fun, books and happiness.

I received my Secret Santa package weeks ago and have been dying to open it! Upon removing the cute Disney Christmas paper, I found The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, which was a wishlist book. I can’t wait to start reading it. Thanks KiwiinEngland for sending it to me! I hope you are having a good day and wish you a happy new year!

Review coming soon!

Left on the shelf.