The Night Watch

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Night Watch was a fantastic choice for listening to on audio, and the production was wonderful. I had the audio version from Audible, narrated by Juanita McMahon.

The narrator is brilliant; each character has their own distinctive voice and the dramatisation adds layers of emotion to the already touching story.

I also happened to have a copy of the book in hardback (purchased for 20p from the library discard pile) and I ended up finishing the book by reading rather than listening.

The contrast was interesting. Reading versus being read to aloud must engage my brain in different ways, because I experience the story quite differently.

Listening to a story, I have more pictures in my mind and the scenes seem more vivid. It's like a movie or a stage play, happening in real time in front of you, so to speak. However, with an audio book I'm much less aware of the language or the writing style, and I often miss details when my mind wanders for a second.

With a printed book, I do picture characters and scenes but I think less vividly. I read slowly and I tend to re-read passages a lot. My focus seems to be divided about equally between the writing and style and the story itself.

The Night Watch was long and lovingly told. The story traces Kay, Duncan, Viv and Helen in London after the war, all damaged by events of the past few years. When the story jumps backward, into the middle and then the beginning of the war, we see the characters live through moments that changed and haunted them.

Sarah Waters seems able to bring her characters to life, and then let them live, in small moments. She lets them be alone, lets them think and feel. I like her detailed touch. These tiny physical moments, opening a flask, picking up an old clay pipe, walking up a flight of stairs, are somehow extraordinary when Waters tells them.

She accomplishes the trick of enabling each character to have a physical, bodily existence and an inner psychological reality at the same time. The best example of this is when one of the characters cuts herself as an act of release from intense emotional pain; but actually, I think this balance is struck throughout the novel. The characters act, but they are always feeling at the same time, and sometimes their feelings are opposite to their actions.

Another benefit of listening to the book was that each character had a distinct voice and accent. Actually, the accents played quite an important part in the story, being strongly associated with class and identity in Britain. I'm not sure, if I had only read the book myself, that I would have been able to distinguish the accents as clearly.

I found myself most caught up with the narrative of Duncan and his rediscovered friend Fraser. Of all the storylines, this was the one I wanted more of.

If you've read The Night Watch, which set of characters did you most engage with?

Even if you've read this book already, I highly recommend listening to the audio version!


I read this for the GLBT Reading Challenge -- this wraps up my year of reading at least 8 books by or about gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered people. A great challenge and one I hope to repeat.