'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!).

Other Reviews

things mean a lot
Tales from the Reading Room