Night Watch (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
A novel
-
-
4.1 • 290 Ratings
-
-
- $8.99
Publisher Description
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War—and a brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds
"A tour de force." —Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
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, 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 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 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.
Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This Pulitzer Prize–winning historical novel contrasts the trauma of war with surprisingly bright moments from the 19th-century approach to mental illness. Twelve-year-old ConaLee’s father never returned home from the Civil War, leaving her and her mother, Eliza, defenseless when an itinerant man finds the pair and begins terrorizing them. The horrific abuse has left Eliza mute when she and ConaLee arrive at West Virginia’s Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, an unexpected place of healing and hope. Author Jayne Anne Phillips immerses you in this difficult time and place as the POV shifts from one finely textured character to the next. Though the horrors Phillips describes are unflinching, we were amazed to read about the kind, compassionate care that was practiced at the facility. (Quotes from its real-life superintendent Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride are interspersed throughout.) Don’t miss this deeply moving tale of healing and survival.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Exquisite attention to detail propels a superb meditation on broken families in post–Civil War West Virginia from Phillips (Lark and Termite). In 1874, 12-year-old ConaLee and her mute mother, Eliza, are delivered to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston by an abusive man known to ConaLee as Papa, who has sold off the pair's possessions. Papa assures ConaLee that the asylum will cure Eliza; before he departs, he also reveals he is not ConaLee's father. Mother and daughter are welcomed by night watchman O'Shea, a Union Army veteran who lost his eye in battle. As her health improves, Phillips oscillates between 1874 and 1864 to fill in narrative puzzles, explaining Eliza's quiet nature, the origins of Papa in their lives, the identity and fate of ConaLee's real father, and O'Shea's injury. A profound sense of loss haunts the novel, and Phillips conveys a strong sense of place (describing the asylum, she writes, "There was noise and commotion, all of a piece, like off-pitch music"). The bruised and turbulent postbellum era comes alive in Phillips's page-turning affair.
Customer Reviews
Yes
A wonderful story.
Fair read
The beginning was good. The middle a bit confusing and the ending was good.
What strange syntax was that?
An interesting story, but amid the tangled vines and brambles, words were twisted in such a strange vernacular or attempt at magical realism that they devolved into gobbledygook. Long passages of word stew so thick they defied my ability to comprehend, truly indecipherable. Dearbhla, interesting and integral to the story, became a caricature, her mystique unknowable, unbelievable. Indeed the Quaker concept of treating the mentally unsound with compassion was probably the finest concept anyone has come up with to date, but the author besmirched it with suggestions of deceit through unethical behavior by the cook and Dr Story. I'm not quite sure where this author was taking me, what she wanted me to think. It became such a tangled mess I’m not sure she knew. So many characters, some searching for their identity, some hiding their's, many never likely to find it, some not even interested, and O'Shea fearful of finding out. Turns out we have to create our own identity, no matter from where or from whom we came. But I’ve read Twain and I’ve read Morrison and I’ve read One Hundred Years of Solitude—it shouldn’t have to have been so hard to figure out what the author might be trying to tell me.