The Night Watch by Sarah Waters - tipped to win the Booker
October 8th 2006 06:52
In two days time, on Tuesday the 10th, the winner of this year's Man Booker Prize will finally be announced. The prize is worth £50,000 ($AU125,000) to the winner and a massive increase in book sales and thus royalties.
Unfortunately, many of us have not had the chance to read all the books on the shortlist prior to the announcement on Tuesday. Thankfully, I found the time to read one: Sarah Waters' The Night Watch.
I trust that this novel is well worth your time. It's broken into three parts that run in reverse order: 1947 (after the war), 1944 (during the war) and 1941 (at the start of the war). At the start of the book, the four main characters are in various states of private misery and as the narrative reverses, the readers comes to an understanding of why they are so... flat.
If you've ever been curious about what life was like for people (everyday people, not just soldiers and politicians) in London during the first world war, you'll enjoy this book. If you've ever wanted to know how people spoke, smoked, ate, dressed and entertained themselves, you won't be disappointed.
This novel also manages to impress on the reader a sense of what gay life would have been like in the forties - what had to remain hidden, even as the bombs fell - in a refreshing, lighthearted tone. For heterosexual women, too, societal pressures regarding sex are evoked in all their stifling, degrading truth in this novel, the second of Waters' to be nominated for the Booker - Fingersmith (2002) also received a nomination.
Prison life, extramarital sex, gunfire and literary merit, The Night Watch has got it all.
You can read the transcript of a webchat with Sarah Waters on www.themanbookerprize.com
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