Night watch

by Jayne Phillips

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

Published January 9, 2025

Reviews

[Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly special novel. Tragic, violent and filled with such hope. Easily one of the best novels I have read this year. It will be top five for this year without a doubt. So devastating. There is one part that is inevitable but still shocking in the extreme. Again - truly magnificent.

[Michael Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great but WARNING: be careful which edition you choose.
The prose is great, but I’m more one for the story, and that kept me turning pages. However, it’s not a happy tale.

The Fleet 2024 paperback edition in the UK has at least a line missing from the bottom of at least 40 pages, so try and get another edition.

[Jo Larkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story kept me hooked….though I found some of the violence very difficult to read. I wasn’t a great fan of the prose. Perhaps that is partly because I am British, and wasn’t helped by reading the Fleet 2024 paperback edition which is missing at least the last line from about 40 pages. I found it “bumpy” to read. It didn’t flow. I had to keep looping back to check my understanding.
It did, however, paint picture in my mind’s eye which is a good thing.

[Carla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was just ok for me, the Civil War setting was interesting as I’ve not read a lot of historical fiction from that period. The writing was good, but I’m not sure it screams prize winner in my opinion.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful prose...

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat dull.

[Tim Palfreman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It tells the story of a poor family in West Virginia, during and after the American civil war. I learned a lot, particularly about the tough, subsistence life in the Allegheny mountains at that time; the horrors of the war; the lawlessness caused by the chaos of the war; the social reality of ‘blended families’ caused by the deaths of so many family members from war, illness and childbirth; and the healthcare of the wounded and ‘insane’. I can see why it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2024.

The narrative pace slowed in the middle of the book, to the point where reading became an act of will, but it picked up again towards the end, to reach a satisfying, melodramatic conclusion, worthy of a Charles Dickens novel.