bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

sponsorType

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

factSheets

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

copyrighted

customTimezone

liveContents

SCMP Reporter

The Night Watch

by Sarah Waters

Virago, HK$202

Published in February

Odds 5/2

Clearly the frontrunner this year,  The Night Watch is a reverse mystery, beginning in 1947 post-war London and following its characters back to wartime 1944 and again to 1941. By the conclusion - or is it the beginning? - the common threads become clear. What links Kay, a crop-haired lesbian who found purpose as an ambulance driver working amid the fires and debris of the night-time bombings, with matrimonial agency workers Viv, who underwent a grisly abortion, and Helen, increasingly estranged from her writer lover, and Helen's brother Duncan, who spent the war in a cell in Wormwood Scrubs prison with a conscientious objector?

Waters' control of pace and unobtrusive attention to detail are impressive. Her bombing raids are at once terrifying and oddly beautiful.  She eschews cinema cliche and captures the everyday  minutiae.  This is a huge departure for Waters, 40, who built a strong fan base on the Victorian pastiche of  Tipping the Velvet and  Fingersmith, short-listed for the 2002 Booker. The Night Watch has been broadly acclaimed.

'You can never overestimate what kind  of a shadow this casts over you. I was dealing with characters who were unhappy or stuck. I lived with it for four years and I didn't want to think about loss, or being stuck any more.'  - Sarah Waters



The Night Watch