I cannot believe how far behind I am in posting. As usual, the end of year was busy. For November’s book club we read The Night Watch by Jayne Ann Phillips. I knew it was a historical fiction novel based on the aftermath of the Civil War in America, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, so I assumed it would gripping and meaty. What I did not expect was the lyrical, almost dream-like quality of the writing. The lack of punctuation made following the prose difficult at first, but the characters were intriguing and uniquely voiced so eventually my brain could map who was “speaking” and follow the story.
What I found most brilliant about this story was the inversion in common tropes. One might assume a story in the post-Civil War era framed in a mental asylum would be part Red Badge of Courage and part One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but in fact the war scenes detail brutality measured with honor, brotherhood, and purpose, and the asylum seems more like a modern day health resort than a mental institution (aside: the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the book really did exist as did Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride it’s founder. Dr. Kirkbride was a physician who advocated for compassion in treatment of the mentally ill and helped many families heal after the Civil War.)
The scenes of horror in this novel were counternarratives–stories often skipped in epic novels, those of domestic violence, rape, child abuse, and abandonment. This is a novel that tells what happened to the women and the children left behind when the men went away to war, and it is heart wrenching, but speaks of community, strength, and healing.
I found the characters in the novel complex, the weaving of history with fiction beautifully executed, and the counternarrative to be brilliant. It is not a quick or easy read, and will absolutely require you to engage your mind in the interwoven tales between timelines, characters, and locations, but if you are interested in reading a poetic account of bravery, love, magical realism, and hope despite the odds, and to learn a little bit more about the Civil War than what happened on the battle fields, this book will not disappoint.