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Review
“Beautiful, mournful . . . Carefully and engrossingly crafted . . . The good suffer equally with the bad. Phillips’s artistic conscience won’t let her flinch from this truth, but her generous heart won’t let it be the last word. She leaves readers with a rueful yet doggedly hopeful maxim that could easily serve as an epigraph for Night Watch as a whole: ‘Endurance was strength.’”
—Wendy Smith, The Washington Post
“A story of trauma and restoration in the aftermath of the Civil War . . . Ms. Phillips presents harrowing, visceral scenes of war, but a lot of this novel relates the daily business of convalescence in an asylum, with loving attention given to the motley staff that tends to the unwell . . . The theme of healing extends to the plot. Ms. Phillips, who is drawn to depicting the poor, the mentally disabled, the wounded and other vulnerable souls, is a principled practitioner of narrative magic. Not only serendipity but a kind of clairvoyance connects the characters . . . Goodness is a real thing in this novel—a verifiable force—and the question posed is whether we still have the sensitivity to discern it.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“Phillips is very good at is capturing a sort of inner dialect, conveyed here in a language inflected with a Southern twang, modulated to reflect characters’ social status and degree of education . . . It is when Phillips channels [these] thoughts that the telling, like the story itself, becomes [so] compelling, even beautiful.”
—Ellen Akins, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Phillips is at the top of her game in Night Watch, devising a mesmerizing plot, which focuses on survival, family and isolation. It is a portrait of a family in peril, and the reader will be impressed with this novel, which rivals [Phillips’s previous novel] National Book Award finalist, Lark And Termite.”
—Wayne Catan, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Phillips’s depiction of a ravaged world in which so many have lost their way or had it stolen from them, both physically and mentally, feels true to the profoundly destabilizing nature of her subject . . . With this excellent novel, Phillips has brought a little more of this foundational American episode into the light.”
—Laird Hunt, The Guardian
“Phillips’ intricately woven storylines are engaging, and her characters range from endearing to haunting . . . There are dozens of passages in Night Watch that deliver moments so vivid, so full of sensory awareness, that they demand both immediate rereading and the folding down of the appropriate page’s corner so they can be revisited. Read this book for those passages. Read it to learn a history you didn’t know you didn’t know. Actually, just read this remarkable novel to be enriched in your understanding of an era that has been so very much forgotten. Read Night Watch to be enlightened.”
—Kristin Macomber, Washington Independent Review of Books
“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
“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
“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 Elliott Dark, author of Fellowship Point
“Gorgeous prose, attention to detail, and masterful characters . . . Set in West Virginia during and after the Civil War, Phillips’ book takes as given that slavery was evil and the war a necessity, focusing instead on lives torn apart by the conflict and on the period’s surprisingly enlightened approach toward care of the mentally ill . . . Pitch-perfect voice . . . Haunting storytelling and a refreshing look at history.”
—Kirkus, starred
“Exquisite attention to detail propels a superb meditation on broken families in post–Civil War West Virginia . . . A profound sense of loss haunts the novel, and Phillips conveys a strong sense of place . . . The bruised and turbulent postbellum era comes alive in Phillips’s page-turning affair.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred
“Vivid . . . Phillips excels in crafting original takes on human circumstances, like mother-daughter relationships and women’s vulnerabilities and resilience. Her setting here is equally striking: the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in rural West Virginia . . . The historical milieu comes alive in all its facets as Phillips evokes the enduring bonds of both blood and chosen families.”
— Booklist
“Tracing an arc from catastrophic damage and loss to recovery through the Civil War and its aftermath, Phillips marries a timeless emotional quality and utterly contemporary sensibility to create a satisfying work in her first novel in a decade . . . Night Watch is escapist in the best sense of the word, allowing readers to immerse themselves in the experience of a distant era and identify deeply with the struggles of the people who lived through it.”
—Harvey Freedenberg, BookPage
—Wendy Smith, The Washington Post
“A story of trauma and restoration in the aftermath of the Civil War . . . Ms. Phillips presents harrowing, visceral scenes of war, but a lot of this novel relates the daily business of convalescence in an asylum, with loving attention given to the motley staff that tends to the unwell . . . The theme of healing extends to the plot. Ms. Phillips, who is drawn to depicting the poor, the mentally disabled, the wounded and other vulnerable souls, is a principled practitioner of narrative magic. Not only serendipity but a kind of clairvoyance connects the characters . . . Goodness is a real thing in this novel—a verifiable force—and the question posed is whether we still have the sensitivity to discern it.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“Phillips is very good at is capturing a sort of inner dialect, conveyed here in a language inflected with a Southern twang, modulated to reflect characters’ social status and degree of education . . . It is when Phillips channels [these] thoughts that the telling, like the story itself, becomes [so] compelling, even beautiful.”
—Ellen Akins, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Phillips is at the top of her game in Night Watch, devising a mesmerizing plot, which focuses on survival, family and isolation. It is a portrait of a family in peril, and the reader will be impressed with this novel, which rivals [Phillips’s previous novel] National Book Award finalist, Lark And Termite.”
—Wayne Catan, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Phillips’s depiction of a ravaged world in which so many have lost their way or had it stolen from them, both physically and mentally, feels true to the profoundly destabilizing nature of her subject . . . With this excellent novel, Phillips has brought a little more of this foundational American episode into the light.”
—Laird Hunt, The Guardian
“Phillips’ intricately woven storylines are engaging, and her characters range from endearing to haunting . . . There are dozens of passages in Night Watch that deliver moments so vivid, so full of sensory awareness, that they demand both immediate rereading and the folding down of the appropriate page’s corner so they can be revisited. Read this book for those passages. Read it to learn a history you didn’t know you didn’t know. Actually, just read this remarkable novel to be enriched in your understanding of an era that has been so very much forgotten. Read Night Watch to be enlightened.”
—Kristin Macomber, Washington Independent Review of Books
“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
“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
“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 Elliott Dark, author of Fellowship Point
“Gorgeous prose, attention to detail, and masterful characters . . . Set in West Virginia during and after the Civil War, Phillips’ book takes as given that slavery was evil and the war a necessity, focusing instead on lives torn apart by the conflict and on the period’s surprisingly enlightened approach toward care of the mentally ill . . . Pitch-perfect voice . . . Haunting storytelling and a refreshing look at history.”
—Kirkus, starred
“Exquisite attention to detail propels a superb meditation on broken families in post–Civil War West Virginia . . . A profound sense of loss haunts the novel, and Phillips conveys a strong sense of place . . . The bruised and turbulent postbellum era comes alive in Phillips’s page-turning affair.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred
“Vivid . . . Phillips excels in crafting original takes on human circumstances, like mother-daughter relationships and women’s vulnerabilities and resilience. Her setting here is equally striking: the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in rural West Virginia . . . The historical milieu comes alive in all its facets as Phillips evokes the enduring bonds of both blood and chosen families.”
— Booklist
“Tracing an arc from catastrophic damage and loss to recovery through the Civil War and its aftermath, Phillips marries a timeless emotional quality and utterly contemporary sensibility to create a satisfying work in her first novel in a decade . . . Night Watch is escapist in the best sense of the word, allowing readers to immerse themselves in the experience of a distant era and identify deeply with the struggles of the people who lived through it.”
—Harvey Freedenberg, BookPage
About the Author
JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS is the author of Black Tickets, Machine Dreams, Fast Lanes, Shelter, MotherKind, Lark and Termite, and Quiet Dell. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bunting Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Winner of an Arts and Letters Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she was inducted into the Academy in 2018. A National Book Award finalist, and twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, she lives in New York and Boston.
Review:
4.5 out of 5
89.23% of customers are satisfied
5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing, complex story.
Marvelous historical fiction, with a large dose of reality. The characters are very well drawn. I felt drawn into their stories. There sadness made me sad.
4.0 out of 5 stars Art Expands Understanding of Crucial History
Night Watch, a novel by Jayne Anne Phillips, this month won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It tells the story of women and anguish during the American Civil War and its aftermath, of mothers and surrogate mothers and widows caught in the killing of their husbands and children in battle. It is finally a story about a driven will to survive, to the breaking point, horrors that visit their lives. Men are not portrayed propitiously in this narrative.Phillips creates a specific reality for each of her characters and mixes their historical situations effectively. Husbands conscripted for war are lost to fighting. Families are sundered, in spirit or in fact. Without a male protector in isolated precincts, rape is a real fear, and vulnerability to theft a fact of life. Children are exploited and abused or rejected by mothers as spoiled by forceful parentage. Night Watch uncovers a world where women, codified by law as second-class citizens, must depend on men who shirk their duties and responsibilities. Laws promulgated to address injustice toward women and to protect their rights as citizens would come later. In 1874, the year of post-Civil War reconstruction used by Phillips, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded, and the political drive to outlaw alcohol commenced. In 1919 prohibition was ratified as the18th constitutional amendment in response to alcohol abuse disrupting domestic culture.Night Watch has a well-researched background for a fundamentally serious story on a serious topic set in America’s most serious history, the Civil War, and its aftermath. One fault of the narrative is an almost total lack of humor. Another is that the resolution suffers slightly but manifestly from contrivance. Against other virtues, this might be quibbling. In 1874 a woman at the edge of sanity is taken to a lunatic asylum because of horrifying circumstances and abuse. This is brilliantly and believably portrayed. Daughter ConaLee accompanies her mother, in a subterfuge that allows acceptance into the asylum, Eliza, now neurotically speechless and under the name of Miss Janet, finds sanctuary and safety. And more satisfying discoveries will eventually unfold.There is a buried intensity in how Jayne Anne Phillips writes. The Pulitzer Prize is focused on talent. Her sentences are sharp, paired; her scenes are vivid. Behind an obvious effort of research and story is a determination to serve art and life. This artistic fortitude makes the foundation for her entire novel.Though Phillips’s evocation of men as cowardly and morally evasive can weary as too unidirectional, her emphasis is historically accurate. She has a point. And she is writing history, not re-writing it. Using fiction as art’s way of expanding dimension and perspective, she speaks to what has become the clichéd, ignored, or even abandoned plight of women in our society. Her representation of what happened to her fictional characters in a carefully reconstructed account of a particular time resonates truth. The frangible nature of chance and fate for women during a war that took from them their men and boys is the undergirding theme of Night Watch. Jayne Anne Phillips has written her best novel so far, and it will stand. --Tom Casey
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and Pulitzer story tragic yet uolifting!
Although many may pass this one by because its civil war setting, I say give it a chance and embrace the characters. The author cleverly switches the narration at book chapters. Maybe we have seen this before, but they also capture the characters essense in the writing style change, and that worked with me. We slowly learn more as the story progresses keeping us enthralled and engaged all the way to the end. I couldn't put it down! I could see this book as a movie too!
3.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional writing spoiled by preposterous plot
Ms. Phillips is an outstanding writer with a distinctive voice, though strongly influenced by McCarthy and Faulkner. Can't think of another woman author who is, maybe Paulette Jiles. However, there are large problems with the events in Night Watch. Spoilers follow: Exactly why "Papa" takes Eliza and Conalee to the insane asylum in the first place is never explained and makes no sense. Why not just leave them? He does not return to claim their land. Later, he turns up at the same insane asylum as a raving lunatic, where Eliza's amnesiac husband (a head injury in the war) just happens to be the Night Watch. Papa's sudden insanity is completely unmotivated and never explained. Then he escapes, but returns to the exact place and exact time that Eliza and her husband are telling Dr. Story of their relationship, goes crazy and kills the husband. 3.5 stars for the writing alone, 4 or 5 if the plot points hadn't been so transparently contrived and wildly implausible.
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book
It’s very different from what I usually read. I did find self skimming pages but overall a fine book to read.
4.0 out of 5 stars Pulitzer Picked A Pretty Good One!
I do not always agree with the Pulitzer choice. In fact I really hated one several years ago but I loved Demon Copperhead last year and liked very much Night Watch this year. This story was compelling and the history lesson contained in it was interesting. The author also has an amazing talent for description which brings me to the one small fault I found with the novel. At times it seemed that she interrupted her narrative a beat or two too long by getting lost in the poetic details.
5.0 out of 5 stars Felt like lost family history…
Jayne Anne Phillips’ brilliant novel has raised many questions for me, aroused my curiosity about my own ancestors who arrived from Ireland at the very start of The Civil War.My first relatives to touch soil in America - at pre-Ellis Island Castle Rock - were deeply impacted by the war. The Lawler family had survived “the Great Famine” (more aptly named the Great Starvation) and arrived in New York in September, 1861. Two parents and five children. The two oldest boys (still in their late teens) were conscripted upon arrival. One month to the day, the eldest, John, was killed in the 2nd Battle of Falls Church (Virginia). His younger brother Andrew survived the amputation and cauterization of one arm. Beyond that I know nothing.I have a copy of the last letter John wrote home, and it is truly bittersweet to see one’s own traits in that of an ancestor: in my case I appear to have the same hyper-loquacity expressed in John’s 5-page+ letter (he filled the margins with his love and best wishes for several people, including one young woman they’d met on the boat over.Ms. Phillips’ opus has lit the long-dry fuse of the keg of powder I’ve been sitting upon for years - I wrote one worthless novel to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Writing, and now I plan to begin the digging, and the writing, to bring my family’s experience of this abominable war to some sort of fruition or closure…
5.0 out of 5 stars I loved the book!
At first the book was hard to figure out. No quotation marks, so hard to know who is talking. There are parts that are heart wrenching but hopeful at the end. I learned a lot about the Civil War era and the Insane Asylum in West Virginia. I liked the book. We read it for book club, and reviews were mixed.
I so loved this book
I’m a Canadian in her 60s who studied what Americans would call AP History when I was 18. I have always been interested, saddened and fascinated with the psychosocial antecedents and impacts of your Civil War. My initial college education was English literature and journalism. I then retrained in late middle age as a nurse. For the past 12 years I have worked as a psychiatric nurse at a rural Canadian psychiatric hospital that is very old and quite similar to the Trans Allegheny. So this book obviously resonates personally. Even if it hadn’t, I am so moved by the beautiful evocative descriptions of country, landscape and place, and of the depth of the characters. I periodically make the drive from Canada to Florida and typically pass through W. Virginia. Next time I shall stop in Weston. Thank you JAP
Marvellous writing
This is a marvellous novel. Set in the chaotic, almost apocalyptic, aftermath of the American Civil War.A traumatised mother and her loving daughter seek refuge in a lunatic asylum in West Virginia.As one of the characters says: 'When the killing ends the grief goes on.'Fascinating characters and a powerful plot.Highly recommended.
Spirit of the Time Pictured Perfectly
A somewhat disturbing read. Especially for someone not familiar with the after effects of the civil war in the Unites States. The lawlessness, the animosity and the cruelty on full display.A difficult but eye-opening read.
a moving read
This beautiful novel touches me greatly, especially since I have a family touched by the War. The characters are real and deep. Recommended!
NOPE
The Pulitzer judges were given this book to judge with money inserted in the pages. Can't think of any other explanation
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Night Watch (Pulitzer Prize Winner): A novel
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