欧宝娱乐

I read the first 150 pages of this a couple weeks ago and then put it down, discouraged. It lacked a usually essential quality - good writing - and the events of the plot alone weren't grabbing me. I've now picked it back up again, but so far it seems to be more of the same. The cast of characters is made up primarily of extraordinarily sensitive and disappointed people who go about constantly disappointing and being insensitive to those around them. A fair amount of the plot seems to involve being late for engagements or missing them entirely, never for a good reason, and then whoever was snubbed does the same thing to someone else, just as unreasonably. Moreover, they all seem to reside in the 1940s by sheer force of will on Waters's part; the (time) setting does not feel at all natural.

That all said, I will post a fairer review when/if I finish, by which time I hope at least that the characters' sad, sad sadness will have become moving or meaningful.

Wow. This makes me want to ... never read this book.

It was amazing!! Can't believe you found it boring and (gasp!) badly written. It's as though you read a different book to me, and all the other people who have reviewed it.

yes you (Kate) are right - I felt that the tool of having the three time periods was just blatantly used to mystify the reader so that we would eventually find out the terrible thing that had happened in the kitchen and why Duncan was in prison - even now I cant quite remember why he was or even it I was that interested in the weird relationship between Duncan and the other one. The only heterosexual relationship in the book ended with a horrific abortion which wasnt very re-assuring. Yes there was only one character I vaguely liked as well - I think her name was Helen ?!? But even now I find it difficult to remember which female character was which as the characters were so badly drawn I would have had to take notes to remember who was who.... thanks for your review. !

After having flew through Water's "The Little Stranger", I went straight to the book store to devour any of her other works. I stood there for an hour trying to figure out which one to get and finally settled on the "the Night Watch"...and three weeks later, I'm struggling to finish this. For any of you that have read this book and are less than thrilled, I really reccommend "the little stranger" - it literally had me on the edge of my seat with goosebumps. I'll see if I can manage to finish The Night Watch but I'm just not really liking any of the characters and don't feel very connected to what is happening to them.

Francesca wrote: "After having flew through Water's "The Little Stranger", I went straight to the book store to devour any of her other works. I stood there for an hour trying to figure out which one to get and fina..."

It was the same for me -- I plowed through the Little Stranger (and adored it...It really scared me) and went right to the Night Watch. Did you end up finishing it? I actually really enjoyed it. I thought it was a fairly exciting, dramatic historical epic with some good gruesome violence and a little bit of sex thrown in to spice it up.

I so agree with you! Just finished that book and totally annoyed by it.

I'm very slowly reading this. I can agree with every single word of your review so far.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You're respondding to a totally different book than the one I read!

I also found the first section hard. But after finishing the book, I wanted to immediately read it again. It鈥檚 a few years later that I鈥檓 on my 2nd read and enjoying every minute - especially part one.

The book was beautifully written, but I can see how its social world might not appeal to a reader of the 2000s. I was born in 1950 (in other words, my young parents were the contemporaries of Waters' characters), and I feel she captured the very tone of middle- and upper-class aspirations in that generational cohort with uncanny accuracy. The cast of characters in The Night Watch is not socially homogeneous, but it is not "diverse" in the current sense of the word. It is very much a book about queer urban Englishwomen's experience in the 1940s, and one of the things it explores is how the English class and legal systems hedged queerness asymetrically. If you're looking for a rousing wartime adventure or self-empowered heroines, you're out of luck. You're also out of luck if you think Waters writes (or should write) whatever kind of book you think she should write. It's fine to be bored/irritated by/dislike a book, but not really fair to dispense absolutist judgments ("badly written") without stating your criteria for "good" or "bad" prose fiction. My criteria for calling The Night Watch's writing "beautiful" fall somewhere between "standard prose as in NY Times editorials" and "literary prose" as in Anne Patchett.

I鈥檓 struggling with this. Not connecting with any characters and am bored. I want to finish it since it鈥檚 for a book club, but I鈥檓 not sure I鈥檒l make it. Thanks for your review!

I too found it difficult to read. I ultimately gave up on it after reading half. I even skipped to ther last chapter and it didn't get any better. Dreary and failed to engage me. Only the 2nd book I've ever not finished.

Thank goodness a few other's found it as tedious as I did. I love Sarah Waters and have thoroughly enjoyed all of her books until this one. Dreary, unlikeable characters, zero plot to speak of and an utter drag to plod through. I managed 3/4 of the book before giving up, something I never thought I'd do with a Sarah Waters book.

I totally agree. I mean, to be fair, I was only born in 2009, so it didn鈥檛 really call to me as much as I suppose it would someone from the forties. However, I am autistic, and is currently OBSESSED with anything from 1940-1969, which obviously includes the second world war. And yet, I struggled so much with finishing this book. I bought it while I was in New York and I with it, I bought 7 other books. In the week I was there, I read three entire books, and yet it took me over a month to finish the night watch. She uses so many words, you don鈥檛 even understand the plot, because it鈥檚 just filled with unnecessary details.