Night Watch

A Novel

By: Jayne Anne Phillips

Narrated by: Karissa Vacker, Theo Stockman, Maggi-Meg Reed

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.

©2023 Jayne Anne Phillips (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"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

The writing was poetic and mesmerizing

Loved it and so thrilled she was recognized for it. The Pulitzer team is to be commended.

Disappointing

I make an effort to read the Pulitzer winner every year and I pretty much always find the book engaging and enjoyable. So, I was particularly disappointed by the Night Watch. I never felt invested in the characters. The plot jumped around in ways that made the book feel a bit disjointed and, most importantly, I felt like it was less about the action in the asylum and more about the few characters the book focuses on and their journey there. I was envisioning a story focused on the details of the asylum in the historical context, but we never got there in any depth. I suppose if you really enjoy civil war era fiction, this might be engaging for you, but even then the plot is mostly focused on superficial details of the war and, instead on a few characters who are affected by the horrors associated with it. In the end, I finished this novel since it wasn’t particularly long, but it felt like a chore to me and I wouldn’t recommend it to others. There were many other stand out books I read this year that, I feel, were more deserving of the Pulitzer (see James).

Riveting story!

The story kept my attention from beginning to end. The characters were multi faceted and extremely endearing. The history of the civil war time period was was told from the perspective of both sides. The narrative was at times heart wrenching. It caused me to”cheer-on” the survival and success of the main characters. Highly recommend this wonderful novel!!

Extraordinary, deserving of its Pulitzer Prize

Wow. Often contemporary literary fiction asks you to be patient and ease into the story, but not this one. The first minutes gripped me and held me captive until I'd finished. The characters were alive in my mind. The Audible version with multiple narrators is superb.

Exquisitely Descriptive

Beautiful and dramatic in it's content, character descriptions and lyrical narratives. A pleasure to listen to.

Compassion & Brutality in Civil War Period

Very nicely written story of the civil war period. It shows the ravages that took place, but also shows a compassion that was beyond its time. I really enjoyed it.

Disappointing

It dragged on and on with just a few interesting short breaks. So much mundane and repetitive detail. I had to switch to 1.5x speed to have any hope of sticking with it to the end. There are no profound or unexpected insights or perspectives. I learned a bit about insane asylums of the late 19th century but beyond that there was nothing new.

I loved this book!

the characters and story pulled me along. I enjoyed the settings and the history. Very satisfying ending.

the beautiful poetic writing

I do agree with the review that said that more clarity would have been helpful. There were times when the historical context and the identity of the character being focused on could have been shared more directly initially, prefacing that character's history, etc.

The story line I

I love this book. It was a wonderful, beautiful story. I felt like I knew each character and loved the narration.