LoveReading Says
Richly characterful and raw, with touches of magic, Jayne Anne Phillips’ Night Watch is a sublime story of recovering from trauma. Fans of immersive historic fiction are sure to fall for this treasure hook, line and sinker.
Set in 1874, with the strains and brutalities of the Civil War looming large over countless lives, twelve-year-old ConaLee and her mother, Eliza, are taken to a lunatic asylum by a war vet. Eliza hasn’t uttered a word for a year, so they’ve come for her to be healed, with ConaLee playing the part of her maid.
In time, Eliza makes progress, as mother and daughter become enmeshed in asylum life and the folks they meet there, among them the man known as Night Watch, a child called Weed, and the kindly doctor who practices “Moral Treatment”. At the same time, we discover their poignant family history, and learn about ConaLee’s father who never returned from the war. Above all, we learn about survival, rebuilding and endurance.
Joanne Owen
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Night Watch Synopsis
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024
'A tour de force - breathtaking in both its scope and intensity' TAYARI JONES
'Shatteringly particular and audaciously universal' ALICE RANDALL
'Excellent... Phillips has brought a little more of this foundational American episode into the light' GUARDIAN
'Beautiful, mournful... Phillips's artistic conscience won't let her flinch from this truth, but her generous heart won't let it be the last word' WASHINGTON POST
In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee and her mother, Eliza, who hasn't spoken in more than a year, arrive at the Trans-Allegh-eny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital's entrance by a war vet-eran who has forced himself into their lives. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.
The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their back-story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee's father, who left for the war and never returned. Meanwhile in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother's maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility-the mystery behind the man they call the Night Watch; the child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.
Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds, and a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.
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