BOOK REVIEW
This novel won the Pulitzer prize for literature.
I always find it incredibly interesting to see how readers scored the major prize winners; often there seems to be no synergy between reader and judge.
This is a Gone With the Wind moment.
We see so many releases that are focused on WWII or Vietnam but here we have a sweeping historical fiction saga.
Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.
In 1874, in the wake of the American Civil War, erasure, trauma and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways.
Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year.
They 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 world.
There, far from family, a beloved neighbour 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 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 mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.
This is a beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia’s Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War where a severely wounded Union veteran, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, long abused by a Confederate soldier, struggle to heal.
Content warning: sexual assault and mentions of physical abuse of asylum patients by staff.
If you were put off by such books as Paul Lynch’s The Prophet Song because of the lack of punctuation, this book is not for you,
We are reading this with our book club in June – please contact us if you would like to join us by calling 0430 024 768 or emailing hello@uminabooknook.com.au
Julie Chessman