Night Watch

In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways.

–StoryGraph

MY REVIEW

TW: Rape, physical assault, child abandonment, death, which unsurprising given its Civil War/Reconstruction era timeline

Another one for the fiction book club! This was one that we all had such mixed feelings on. A lot of great details, a lot we didn’t care of, and it encouraged our librarian to ask us what made this a Pulitzer winning novel. One thing we all agreed on? The writing itself was fantastic. Phillips had a very strong writing voice. What we all weren’t so sure about was how this story was put together. Oh! We also all agreed none of us regretted reading it, no matter who much we liked or didn’t like it.

Also, this is *not* a particularly happy story, not that one would think it was, but it veers very far from what the blurb says. The characters are all there but there’s a barrier between reader and them, something I wasn’t always huge fan of. There’s also some very dark moments in the book, and I would advise on considering what your triggers are. I don’t always do trigger warnings, but I’ve slapped some up top before the review that I could recall.

ConaLee feels more like someone in the background, in fact all the characters do. They’re sort of a backup to the landscape and settings. We get background stories for the main plays in this story but it never felt like enough to me and the ending was good but it felt a little weak after everything.

The asylum was by far the best part, it was a great glimpse in to just how advanced it and its director were for the times. Quite uplifting in ways to see such a positive spin on mental health during such a stark time in history.

Another frustrating thing for me though was ConaLee’s father. His story is so fascinating and heartbreaking, his origins so *important* and yet it felt like it was diminished in the book.

So! Good writing style, weak character building. Great settings, lack of depth to how we should feel for these characters. And then the ending felt unsatisfying after everything but I think that was intentional, to be fair.

3.5/5 Cups of coffee from me. I was fascinated by the history and the asylum, I felt disappointed in the character development.