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.
Reviewed by Joanne OwenJoanne Owen’s lifelong love of reading and writing began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, and very much wished that witches (and Mrs Pepperpot) were real.
More reviews by Joanne Owen About Night Watch
From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in a mental asylum in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War.
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Night Watch Synopsis
From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in a mental asylum in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War.
In 1874, in the wake of the war, trauma haunts 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-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital's entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their lives. There, far from family, a beloved neighbour, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.
The twin horrors of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their history: 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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Jayne Anne Phillips Press Reviews
Jayne Anne Phillips is a brilliant artist working at the height of her powers. Word by word, and line by line, there is no one better. This novel lives where a startling imagination meets scrupulous research: Night Watch is a tour de force - breathtaking in both its scope and intensity -- Tayari Jones, author of AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE
There is a luminous beauty in Phillips's prose. Whether it is the dark interiors of war - which have become her forte - or the equally complex and fraught lives of so-called 'ordinary' people, Phillips brings these theaters of peace and loss, death and transcendence together with a remarkable alchemy -- Ken Burns, filmmaker
A superb meditation on broken families in post-Civil War West Virginia . . . The bruised and turbulent postbellum era comes alive in Phillips's page-turning affair - Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
Expect coincidences and convolutions . . . Phillips pulls them off with gorgeous prose, attention to detail, and masterful characters. Haunting storytelling and a refreshing look at history - Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW
A profound meditation on identity, empathy, sanity, daughter-love, nature, and the Civil War, Night Watch will leave you shook and sustained. This novel delivers fictional reckoning that makes way for the potential of real-world reconciliation by delivering complex and necessary testimony and confession. Weaving photographs and fragments of non-fiction prose into an intimate family story, Night Watch is at once shatteringly particular and audaciously universal. Jayne Anne Phillips arrives at the crowning achievement of an extraordinary career -- Alice Randall, author of BLACK BOTTOM SAINTS
Jayne Anne Phillips is a wonderfully gifted storyteller, and few contemporary writers can match the lyricism of her prose, but in this marvelous new novel, largely set in a factual nineteenth-century asylum, she achieves even more: history and imagination merge, and she gives the past a living pulse -- Ron Rash, author of THE CARETAKER
A lovely piece of work . . . Night Watch is another of Jayne Anne Phillips's intimate revelatory creations -- Dorothy Allison, author of BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA
A searing portrait of the cruelties of race, the insanity of war, and the tragedy of its aftermath -- Drew Gilpin Faust, author of THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING: DEATH AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
It's hard to know what to praise first - Jayne Anne Phillips' signature beautiful sentences, the compelling scenes of battle and their ravaged aftermath, the fascinating portrayal of Dr Thomas Story Kirkbride's 'moral treatment' method for the mentally ill, or the vivid depiction of the people and land of West Virginia in the 1860s and 70s. Night Watch takes a highly deserved place among important novels about war and its legacy -- Alice Elliot Dark, author of FELLOWSHIP POINT -
