The Night Watch |
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List Price: $15.00
Our Price: $5.49
Your Save: $ 9.51 ( 63% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Riverhead Trade
Average Customer Rating:   
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PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Riverhead Trade
Manufacturer: Riverhead Trade
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 544
Publication Date: 2006-09-27
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Studio: Riverhead Trade
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Editorial Reviews:
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Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit partying, and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch tells the story of four Londoners-three women and a young man with a past-whose lives, and those of their friends and lovers, connect in tragedy, stunning surprise and exquisite turns, only to change irreversibly in the shadow of a grand historical event.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read in years
Comment: I absolutely loved this book. This was the first Sarah Waters book I have read and I thought the writing was extraordinary and beautiful. I found the characters wonderful, the setting of wartime London fascinating and could not put the book down. Ms. Waters is a fantastic writer - I have since read 'Fingersmith', which I also loved and will read her other books.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dreary novel - didn't grab me
Comment: IThe Night Watch
I ordered this book for the first meeting of an on line book club. We're all current or retired English teachers living everywhere from CA to MI to NY to SD and Thailand and pretty much no one cared for this book! Takes place in England and the book was as dreary as a British winter. It never grabbed me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: dull, dull, duller
Comment:
I try to finish all my books to the bitter end, but I had an especially hard time with this one. Waters departs from her Victorian underworld lesbian heroines to explore well, I don't really know, but I'm sure the War has something to do with it. The intertwining stories of Helen, Viv, and Duncan are told backwards (a lot less interesting than one would think) which allows you to get just invested enough in the present day characters that you start to care about where they're going rather than where they've been. Waters writes beautifully, but I can't help but think that this story lets her characters down. All the straight men are morally suspect if not morally weak. The lesbian love triangle is predictable (fyi when your girlfriend introduces you to another woman it's highly likely they were romantically involved). The war is just a pretense here to make things go not very far.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Intense and captivating
Comment: This is the first Sarah Waters novel I have picked up and, I have to say, I have no doubt about her qualifications for being a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. "The Night Watch" was masterfully written and each of her characters came across as being distinct and separate individuals. Although the story is told backwards, from 1947 to 1941, the reader is not left feeling as though something gravely important is being withheld. Each timeframe operates on its own as story and, even though the rest of the tale is illuminating, a piece can be held as a complete entity. The way the pieces are tied together at the end, however, are well worth the wait and add quite a bit to the plotline and character development. Waters's writing is beautiful in its descriptions and feelings, almost as though she had a direct eye on the events surrounding the war. This is no rose-tinted commentary on human nature, but gritty and dirty beauty.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 4.5 out of 5: Tender and extraordinarily intimate
Comment: Moving backwards in time, the story covers the lives of four Londoners during WWII (2 women and 1 man, all gay except for one straight woman). The lives connect and intersect in surprising and revealing ways. Tender and extraordinarily intimate with the backdrop of brutal war.
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