Night Watch

by: Jayne Anne Phillips

Goodreads description:

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 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.

Helen says: 🤓🤓🤓🤓

It must be good…it won the Pulitzer after all…I listened on audible and really enjoyed it. There were multiple narrators that made it fantastic story telling. It immediately sucked me in. If you liked Cold Mountain, you will love this book. It had a wacky ending (in my opinion). Let’s talk about it when you read it.

Holly says: 🤓🤓🤓3/4

If I had a favorite book of the month, it would be this one. It’s definitely dark, with one character that is so deeply disturbing that it almost makes you distrust any of the other characters who follow (you can’t help thinking they will all be bad) in this mesmerizing journey of ConaLee/Eliza and Eliza/Miss Jane (trust me, it will make sense if you read it). Fortunately, many of the characters who follow are good and kind, which is surprising for a novel that is set post-Civil War largely in a “lunatic asylum”. I was poised to think it was going to be downhill all the way, but it wasn’t! Actually, the more I think about it, the more I really liked this book. It is the only one for me this month that was a real page-turner.

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