The Night Watch

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.

Winner of Stonewall Writer of the Year 2006 (UK)
Short-listed for Man Booker Prize 2006 (UK)
Short-listed for Orange Prize 2006 (UK)
Short-listed for Nibbies 2007 (UK)
Short-listed for James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2007 (UK)

“This outstandingly gifted novelist releases her imagination into her most compelling depiction yet”

The Night Watch is a truthful, lovely book that needs no conjuring tricks to make you want to read it again - Philip Hensher, Observer

Brilliantly done... the period detail never overwhelms the simple, passionate human story. It's a tour-de-force of hints, clues and dropped threads - Suzi Feay, Independent on Sunday

The Night Watch leaves you with the sense of having read something rich and complex pared down with consummate skill by a first-class storyteller into a series of deceptively simple tales of love. Which is a fancy way of saying that Sarah Waters's latest offering lingers on, long after the final page and its first, most fateful meeting - Melanie McGrath, Evening Standard

Waters secret is her absolute control of the pace - each strand of the plot is paid out carefully at the same speed, no rushing, no favouritism. The characters are given equal weight and time, so that by the end of the first section you're equally gripped by all of them. It is in the second section that Waters really proves her genius with plot. We never return to the future, the drama of The Night Watch runs backwards into the war, then before. It is a measure of Waters' talent that this isn't frustrating and that the reader is quite happy to allow her to resolve all the tensions in character and plot in the past - Mary Wakefield, Sunday Telegraph

.... - Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a Ph.D in English Literature and has lectured for the Open University. Thrice crowned 2003 Author of the Year - by the Booksellers Association, Waterstone's and The British Book Awards. Winner of The South Bank Show Award, Sunday Times Author of the Year, The Somerset Maugham Award and the CWA. Shortlisted for the Man Booker.

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.

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