'The Night Watch' - Sarah Waters

[bookgazing]

Literary geek moment: Novels that play around with structure are so much fun! Seriously give me a novel that reorders the traditional linear structure and I am automatically fascinated, like a kitten with tissue paper.

‘The Night Watch’, Sarah Water’s WWII novel is presented in three sections: the first is set in 1947, the second is set earlier in 1944 and the third takes the reader back to 1941. Obviously the reader begins the novel on the first page, which means they read the 1947 section first and then move onto the 1944 section, so as they enter each new section the characters they have been following move backwards in time. The reader knows how the novel ends before they know how each characters story begins.

Telling the reader how a story ends, in the first pages of a novel isn’t unusual. I’ve just finished reading ‘The Drowning People’ by Richard Mason, which begins by telling the reader that the narrator has killed his wife and I’ve read a fair amount of other novels that began by revealing that the narrator has committed a crime. It’s a well established technique that, among other things, increases dramatic tension, as the reader spends the rest of the narrative puzzling over questions of how and why.

Although ‘The Night Watch’ reveals how each character’s narrative strand ends before it allows readers access to the beginning of each character’s story, its structure is re-ordered in a slightly different way from novels, like ‘The Drowning People’. ‘The Night Watch’ has more in common structurally with ‘The White Woman on the Green Bicycle’ by Monique Roffey, which spends a whole section showing the reader where its character’s have ended up and how their story ends, before the beginning is ever written about. This kind of structure creates dramatic tension in a slightly different way.

In the 1947 section the reader is dropped into a world that appears in many respects quite normal (even though the representation of long term gay and lesbian partnerships, as normal during the 1940s makes this novel quite stand out in mainstream publishing). Helen and Julia live together as lovers. Duncan lives a quiet life taking care of an older man called Mr Mundy. Viv takes a day trip with her married lover Reg and visits her brother. Still, there is something quietly jarring about the characters lives. Kay’s life is the one most obviously out of kilter. Her words on the first page, ‘So this, said Kay to herself, is the sort of person you’ve become: a person whose clocks and wrist- watches have stopped...’ suggests her life has been affected by some powerful force and pushed out of the shape she expected it to take. Teasingly obscure allusions that hint at secrets from the past fill this first section, making the reader crave answers to these small mysteries. Everything slightly askew and any engaged reader will want to work out what historical events have caused the sense of oddness that clings to many moments in this section.

Obscuring a mystery is a pretty standard tension building device, just as revealing a plot resolution at the beginning of a novel has become common. The mysteries being hidden in ‘The Night Watch’ are in the past. Again secrets from the past, pretty normal plot drivers. Hang on, here’s the twist. Typically in novels which reveal the end of a story before the beginning, when the characters arrive in the most present moment the reader will be allowed to follow them to all secrets are revealed. By the end of the first section of ‘The Night Watch’ (which, remember, is also the end of the novel’s overall forward progression in time) the top level secrets haven’t been revealed and the reader finds themselves asked to ‘end’ their interaction with the characters with so many questions unanswered. And so the reader turns to the next section, anxious to unearth the origins of so many teasing, potentially tragic, character details.

Instead of sticking with regular structural re-ordering, revealing just one key moment from the end of the novel Waters has placed the entire end of her novel at the beginning. Rather than returning the novel to an entirely linear narrative after that revelation, she sets up three linear sections and each section represents a later time period than the section before it. Flash back scenes in other novels, or more commonly in films, work in the same way to create both shock and anticipation as the reader sees tantalizing glimpses what past events led to the drama of the present. In ‘The Night Watch’ flashback is made use of in an isolated way. Inside each separate section time progresses forward in a straight line for the four main characters and the novel never moves between time periods within one section, which means there is just one flash back at the end of each section and there no corresponding flash forward back to a current narrative.

I’m not saying ‘The Night Watch’ has a structure that draws a reader in by creating dramatic tension in a totally unique way, but I do think her novel pushes hard at the established ways of reordering narrative. Even though above I’ve called each transition into a new, earlier time period a flashback, that label feels inexact. Most flashbacks are written in the past tense, or presented as remembered scenes, but the 1944 and 1941 sections are written in the present tense. The reader is actually moved into those time periods, rather than being allowed to locate themselves in one ‘present’ time period and experience earlier events at a remove. Although the reader should be aware how each characters narrative ends (as they’ve seen them end in the 1947 section) that knowledge fades into the background while reading the 1944 and 1941 sections, due to the use of present tense. All the troubles the characters face in these sections seem serious even if the reader knows they’ll be less important by the end of the novel. All the joys the character’s experience feel sweet and wonderful, even if the reader knows they’ll be undermined by later experiences. It’s an interesting reminder that the significance of feelings and actions can seem to be obliterated by the force of time, but they were always real feelings, important actions. As puzzles are unravelled and points where everything could have turned out quite differently are revealed, it becomes clear that everything is connected. Everything the characters do has significance, even if years later they convince themselves that past events were more important to separate past selves.

That’s a lot of words, just about structure and this feels like a good place to take a break. I’ll hopefully come back later this week with a full on emoting post about the characters, who moved me (Kay, Duncan!).

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Comments

[jennysbooks.wordpress.com]

For a while this was my favorite Sarah Waters book, and now it's a contest between this and Fingersmith, both of which I'm very fond of. I want to reread it!

[bookgazing]

I started with The Little Stranger which I loved, but everyone else says is her least good book. That has me excited - how much better must everything else be?! Now I'm reading all her stuff backwards, so Fingersmith is next I think. As I was checking the quotes for this review I started to get sucked back in, it's very rereadable.

[aartichapati.blogspot.com]

I've got this on the shelf to read! I really like how atmospheric Waters' writing style is. She should live in a damp and drafty old castle populated by ghosts that met tragic ends- she would ROCK a story on that, I bet.

[bookgazing]

I hugely agree!

I was just thinking what 'Dark Matter' by Michelle Paver would be like if Waters wrote it (not a castle, but a shack in the dark, creepy Arctic where there are ghosts). That book is great, it has social commentary and a gay hero, but it never quite takes the mix of social observation + ghost story to the next level. Like in a Waters book the commentary would somehow be about the ghost and the ghost would be about the commentary if you see what I mean, so in the end there'd be this heady mix. In the Paver book, they'reboth interestig lines of story, but they're kept seperate, which still produces a great story it just isn't a Waters book (and nor should it be, Paver has a great style all of her own, but I do kind of want the SW version of this story to exist as well, although where she would put the ladies I'm not sure).

All this to say you should totally read 'The Little Stranger' if you haven't already. I mostly want Sarah Waters to write ghost stories now.

[diaryofaneccentric.wordpress.com]

I bought this book ages ago but for some reason still haven't read it. I've heard a lot of good things about it, and I'm intrigued by the structure. I don't mind books that start at the end and work backward, mainly because I tend to forget about what happened at the beginning until I'm nearing the end and the circle is being joined. I will link to your thoughts on War Through the Generations.

[bookgazing]

The structure is really cool. I have to write about the ending as well in my next post, because it's kind of odd. It's not a circle joiner for me, even though it provides answers, for me it just made me realise how unimportant the answers to how everything started were compared to what else I learned along the way.

[nymeth]

yay Sarah Waters! I'm in awe of everything she did in this book. Like you said the structure itself is not even that uncommon, but she uses it better than anyone else. I can't wait to read your post on the characters.

PS: The day you read Fingersmith will be a GLORIOUS day. Though I'm with Jenny: there's only a tiny little difference between it and this as my favourite Waters.

[bookgazing]

I'm putting it on my Christmas list I think (gah narrowing down book choice for that is hard) so should be reading it soon!

Basically my character post is just 'Kaaaaay', 'Duncan and Fraser 4EVA' and 'Viv, NOOOOO' at this point.

[litlove.wordpress.com]

I am just catching up here. I was wondering why you hadn't posted for so long, and then had the nasty thought that I hadn't updated my feed reader... duh! SO glad you loved The Night Watch. I thought it was amazing and that the structure was genius. By the time I reached that third and final section I felt almost reluctant to carry on (in the best way) because I was dreading finding out what traumatic secrets would be revealed. And it's such a beautifully written book, the way books ought to be, you feel. Yay for Sarah Waters! I have Affinity to read and The Little Stranger - saving 'em up.

[bookgazing]

I'm starting to think that I currently have a thing about structure, because I seem to be focusing all my reviews on that aspect of novels.

Duncan's secret was the one I was anticipating being the worst and it was, but there's something about the normality of how Viv's life took the direction it did that really got me. She met a married man on the train, bonded, made a decision and her life was never the same. So realistic, even if written out like that it sounds like the stuff of romance novels. It's the tiny moments that pull your life along one path.

I would encourage you to read The Little Stranger soon. I think it's excellent and creepy (and then we could talk about it, yay) :)