November 2010 - The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

This was our second book by Sarah Waters, with our first book of hers  The Little Stranger being enjoyed by most members. We all enjoyed her writing style in the first book, and many had already gone out and bought The Night Watch.

The book was very easy to get into, there were a few different stories with different characters, but they all tied in nicely together. Each member had their favourite story and characters, and loved reading especially about that particular part. 

The book is set in War time London, something that we were all fascinated by, and Waters description, in many cases forced us to read up on factual parts of what she had written. At the back of the book, there is a reference, which proves just how interested the author is in the history of London, and also how much time she spent researching. Many of us would like to read some of these books as a result of reading The Night Watch. There were three parts to the book, starting in 1947, and working back to 1941.

The main characters were generally well liked, with the exception of Reggie, Vivs love interest, who we found to be a bit of a creep. Vivs brother was a debatable character, many people sympathised with him when they found out why he had been in prison, but for others it just confirmed his wimpish manner.

For many people we found the descriptions of the bombings terrifying, but the spirit of the Londoners shone through. One passage where Kay and Micky find a man with his leg missing, is particularly funny, as horrible as that description sounds! The setting of the book being in War torn London, definitely made it an interesting read, especially for those who know London well.

  

The ending is difficult to comment on, as the book is written backwards, we were already aware of the outcome before we read the final pages. The book slowly tied up how certain events happened, and answered a lot of questions asked by the reader within the 1947 part of the book at the start. We all agreed, that we would have liked and extra chapter, maybe only 10 pages long, based in 1950 or later, to see how all the characters are at a later date, we felt this would have been a better ending.

  

For this meeting, 5 members attended, giving the book an average score of 7 out of 10. Lowest score 5 and highest was 9.

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