Yet it is the sheer banality of the characters and their lives that to me is both the main strength and the main weakness of this book, viz: it tells just how it was for ordinary, self-absorbed people to have gone through the London Blitz in World War II. I don’t recall another account of wartime London that so faithfully captures the atmosphere of not only the extraordinary, but also – and especially – the quotidian. We see how it all ends, but we don’t know why, and so we are compelled to read on to understand the plot.ĭiscussion: From the other two books I read by Waters – Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet, I was prepared for her amazing attention to detail in setting the scenes for her dramas. When we meet Kay, she is in the habit of going to the movies, but only when they are halfway over, so she can see the ending first, and then go back to the beginning. Vivien’s brother Duncan seems to be in a caretaker relationship with an “uncle” but this is also undefined for us. The three women know Kay, but we are not sure how in the beginning. Helen is in a troubled relationship with Julia. Vivien is in a less-than satisfactory relationship with a married man. Helen and Vivien work at a lonely hearts bureau – an apt theme that is a microcosm of the whole. It allows us to be noble.”) Further, there is no more reason for the passionate encounters that are rationalized during wartime by the sense of fragility of existence.Īt the story’s outset in 1947, the war is over, and life is rather prosaic for the characters. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.

(As Chris Hedges notes in his award winning book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, “The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. In peacetime, life reverts back to the mundane, and those who were once “important” now find they have no more opportunity to be exceptional. War provides a sense of drama to any who live through its scourges. It is only as their pasts are revealed that we find out how they got to this point. With the narrative proceeding backwards, we see in the very beginning the alienation, inchoate bitterness, sense of loss, and melancholy of the characters. Ruins of a London Bookshop after an air raid on October 8, 1940

The night watch by sarah waters