Review Tuesday: The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (#lgbtq #literature #ReviewTuesday)

The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters

Virago Press, 2006

In 1999, Sarah Waters' first novel TIPPING THE VELVET caused a minor sensation. A rich, sprawling tale of Sapphic love in the world of Victorian music halls and secret "women's clubs", TIPPING THE VELVET managed to be outrageously sexy while retaining impeccable literary credentials. Ms. Waters went on to publish two additional books that vividly evoke the Victorian period, the FINGERSMITH (my personal favorite) and AFFINITY. Both focus on lesbian relationships, though they are generally less graphic than Ms. Waters' debut novel.

THE NIGHT WATCH is a very different beast. Set in London during and after the Second World War, it follows the tangled social and emotional ties among three women and one man. Kay is a dominant, mannish person who drives an ambulance during the Blitz, racing out bravely with her comrades to rescue the victims of the bombs that slam London every night. Helen is her submissive, feminine lover, rescued from a destroyed building and sheltered by Kay. Beautiful Viv is hopelessly faithful to Reggie, a married soldier that she met on a train. Duncan, Viv's younger brother, is a shy, sensitive person who might or might not be gay. Over the course of the book we get to know these people, learn their secrets and understand what each one means to the others.

Despite the bombs and the emotional cataclysms, THE NIGHT WATCH is a quieter book than any of Ms. Waters' previous work. Ms. Waters makes the audacious decision to tell her story backwards in time. The book begins in 1947, three years after the war. Kay is a lonely ghost, haunting the streets of London. Helen and Viv work together at a marriage agency, while Duncan is the star performer at a factory for the disabled and the companion of a fussy older man who believes in Christian Science. Over the book's 472 pages, the story retreats to 1944, and then to 1940, when the Germans bombed London for fifty seven nights in a row and killed more than 40,000 civilians. Only at the very end of the novel do we discover how Kay met Helen, and understand the intensity of Kay's need, a need that leaves her empty and haunted when Helen forsakes her for another lover.

THE NIGHT WATCH does not include much explicit sex; it really does not qualify as erotica. However it overflows with desire, hidden and overt, especially the desire that links women even when society forbids such connections. Ms. Waters understands how the physical stirs the emotions, how some quirk of appearance or manner can catch the heartstrings.

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Kay whistled. 'How glamorous you look! Just like Greta Garbo in Grand Hotel.'

She didn't look glamorous really, however; she looked young, and small and rather solemn. The room was cold, and the satin chill; she shivered and blew on her hands. She worked again at folding back the sleeves, almost fretfully - gazing once, as she did it, into the mirror, and then turning quickly away.

Kay watched her, with a sort of ache about her heart. She felt her love, at moments like this, as a thing of wonder - it was wonderful to her, that Helen, who was so lovely, so fair and unmarked, should be here at all, to be looked at and touched... Then again, it was impossible to imagine her in any other place, with any other lover. No other lover, Kay knew, would feel about her quite as Kay did. She might have been born, been a child, grown up - done all the particular, serious and inconsequential things she'd done - just so she could arrive at this point, now; just so she could stand, barefoot, in a satin pyjama-suit, and Kay could watch her.

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THE NIGHT WATCH is not as flashy a book as FINGERSMITH, but as a writer I found myself awed by Ms. Waters' mastery of her craft. Even in the first pages of the book, I was struck by how vividly she could evoke the gritty, tired, ruined world of London after the war.

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A train ran by, two streets away, heading into Clapham Junction; she felt the thrill and shudder of it in the sill beneath her arms. The bulb in a lamp behind her shoulder sprang into life, flickered for a a second like an irritated eye, and then went out. ...

The room was dim. Some of the window glass had been lost, and Mr. Leonard had replaced it with lino. The bed was high, with a balding candlewick bedspread: the sort of bed that turned your thoughts, not pleasantly, to the many people who must, over the years, have slept on it, made love on it, been born on it, died on it, thrashed around on it in fevers. It gave off a slightly sour scent, like the feet of worn stockings. But Kay was used to that, and didn't notice.

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The description simultaneously shapes one's view of the world surrounding the character, and with a single sentence, reveals the character's dark and empty state of mind.

Not everyone will enjoy THE NIGHT WATCH. If you are looking for the brilliant twists that made FINGERSMITH such a tour de force, you will be disappointed, though you'll find much of the same irony. If you miss the free-wheeling sexual exploits of TIPPING THE VELVET, you'll have to look elsewhere. Nevertheless, THE NIGHT WATCH is an achievement, and demonstrates that Ms. Waters' expertise is not limited to Victoria's time.

In a haunting sequence which I view as the centerpiece of the book, Helen and Kay's ex-lover Julia set out on a night journey across blacked out London. They pass demolished homes and deserted churches. All is still and dark, as if they were the only people alive in the world. When they kiss, you are almost ready to believe that this is true.

THE NIGHT WATCH is a serious and only occasionally sexy novel, but in my opinion, one not to be missed.

Review Tuesday: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters (#lesbian #thriller #historical)

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

Riverhead Books, 2014

Frances Wray lives a rather dismal and claustrophobic life in 1922 London. She spends her days cooking and cleaning for her widowed mother, trying to maintain the illusion of gentility though they’re nearly bankrupt. In her scarce free time she mourns the loss of her two brothers, taken by the War, and her former lover Christina, now coupled with another woman.

Desperate to make ends meet, Frances and her mother decide to rent out several rooms. Their lodgers —the “paying guests” of the title—are not the sort of people with whom the Wrays usually associate. Lilian and Leonard Barber come from a different social class, and have different habits and values. They smoke and drink, play the gramophone and dance, host parties and play naughty games. They are a “modern” couple, with much freer manners than the more traditional Wrays.

Though their presence constitutes a painful invasion of Frances’ privacy, the Barbers also bring some color to her drab life. She finds Lilian fascinating, with her bright clothing, costume jewelry, knick knacks and gewgaws, as well as her rather poor and common but boisterously affectionate family. Flirtatious and good-looking, Leonard proves to be a challenge, emphatically and uncomfortably male in what had been an all-female household.

Lilian and Frances become friends, then more than friends, after Frances confesses her former affair with Christina and the younger woman admits how deeply unhappy she is with Leonard. As they grow closer, they struggle to hide their forbidden passion from the world. Then their secret triggers a series of tragic events that entangle them in shared guilt and tear apart their mutual trust.

The Paying Guests is a phenomenally good book. It is simultaneously an historical and social commentary, a terrifying thriller and a steamy lesbian romance. Ms. Waters manages to capture the fleeting nuances of emotion with astounding precision. Her characters live and breathe. Their relationships exhibit all the contrariness and complexity of real human interaction, shifting and reshaping from one moment to the next.

Sarah Waters is known for her rich portrayals of the past. Compared to the colorful Victorian era she captured so expertly in Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, her post-War London feels grim and unsettled, full of uncertainty and suppressed violence. The Great War shattered illusions and remade society. A whole generation of young men died. At the same time, new opportunities opened for women brave enough to take advantage of them.

Despite these new possibilities, women were far from free. Ms. Waters’ horrifying description of a pharmaceutical abortion makes this stunningly clear. Frances chooses to break off her relationship with Christina when they are discovered, rather than being repudiated by her family. Unable to support herself, terrified of being alone, Lilian is trapped in her loveless marriage to philandering Leonard.

All these uncertainties and pressures, as much as their mutual attraction, drive Frances and Lilian into each other’s arms. Their lovemaking is furtive but intense. Without being anywhere nearly as graphic as I (for instance) might be, the author paints scenes that are gorgeously erotic.

But already the darkness was lessening. Lilian was beside her, a shimmer, a blur. She put out her hands and they found her face, they found her lips: they were smooth, cool, wet. She kissed them again, even as she touched them, kissing around and across her own fingers. She drew her hands, damply, to Lilian’s throat, to the silky skin at the opening of her nightgown.

The gown had three small buttons on it, hard and round. She undid the first, and then the second.

‘May I do this?’

She felt Lilian hesitate. But the third button was undone now; now she had parted the cloth, had dipped her head, was stroking and kissing. And after another few seconds of it Lillian moved forward with a sigh to meet the touch of her fingers and her mouth. Her breasts were warm, fantastically heavy, fantastically hard at the tips. Beyond was the thud, thud of her heart—Frances kissed every beat of it.

Finally, The Paying Guests incorporates all the tension of a mystery, a period police procedural complete with swaggering officers, severe judges and dodgy witnesses. This last section of the book was painful to read, as guilt, secrets and circumstances conspire to drive Frances and Lilian apart. I couldn’t stop, though, no matter how dark the story became. I needed to know the verdict—even if things were going to end as badly as it seemed.

I won’t tell you how the book does end, though. I don’t want to spoil the experience.

The Paying Guests is not as much of a feel-good novel as Tipping the Velvet. It’s not as cleverly constructed as Fingersmith. However, it’s one of the most vivid and realistic portrayals of the human heart I have ever read.

Finding One's Voice

One of the things that draws me to the work of a particular author is his or her "voice"--a style or a unique manner of expression that distinguishes that writer's work from other people's fiction. It seems to me that most romance readers are mostly interested in the story and the characters, but for me, a great deal of the enjoyment in reading comes from the clever, effective, or unusual use of language.

I recently finished my fourth book by the amazing Jonathan Lethem. Two of those books (Amnesia Moon and Gun, With Occasional Music) I'd categorize as science fiction. One (Motherless Brooklyn) is an offbeat thriller. The novel I just finished (You Don't Love Me Yet) probably would be considered an unconventional romance with a hearty dose of satire. Despite the variety of genres, all Lethem's books share some stylistic characteristics.

Lethem is a master of the surprising phrase, the original image. Consider the following, for example:

As she roused herself from the cubicle Lucinda felt a sweet nostalgic stirring of affection, almost like green shoots of horniness under the pavement of her hangover.

Or how about:

Traffic buzzed past on Sunset and Fountain, isolating Tang's like a reef in time. Elderly chess opponents in vintage suits nudged pawns across squares at their booths, under clicking, humming fluorescent fixtures, as though installed there by some miraculous hand that had plucked them from a 1930's Vienna kaffeehaus.

I love authors who have such precise control of their words -- even though they make me jealous!

Another recent discovery with an extremely distinctive voice is erotica author Charlotte Stein. Her voice is a breathless, messy first person that stumbles over itself in its eagerness, propelled by love or lust.

His leg brushes mine, and it's terrible but I like it. I think about last week in the cinema, watching pinkly sweet bodies pretend to enjoy each other on the screen, the screen then fading to black just as it got to the really good bits. And him whispering through the darkness at me: Do you want to make our own good bits up?
I did. I do. But then he asked me to touch myself and I couldn't do it. I told him so, too, and he laughed. Though he hadn't laughed at all when I told him that I'd never touched myself. Not ever.
The look on his face! As though a grown woman who never masturbated was the equivalent of a straight man never looking at a big pair of tits. That shocked, slightly condescending expression made me say some spiteful things to him, but none of them landed. Or, at least, he never made me feel bad for saying them.
(From Things That Make Me Give In)

Another favorite of mine is Sarah Waters, author of Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith. Most of her novels have historical settings; she has a talent for bringing her pasts to life, with language that is simultaneously rich and precise.

Sometimes I wonder about my own voice. I deliberately strive for variety in my work. Sometimes I write in first person, sometimes in third. Although the majority of my characters are well educated (many excessively so!), I've tried my hand at writing people from lower social levels--a city stripper with a high school education, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, a Thai bar girl. Are there some common features in my writing that distinguish it from the work of other authors?

Well--I tend to spend a lot of my effort on my setting. I try to bring the time and place where my characters interact into strong focus. In fact, I normally have a less detailed visualization of the characters themselves than I do of their surroundings.

What else? I guess I'd have to say that my sex scenes are distinguished by an emphasis on the characters' emotional reactions, as opposed to their physical actions. In general, reviewers tend to praise those scenes as intense and engaging--but I'd guess that at least half my sentences describe what the characters think, feel and imagine, as opposed to what they do with or to each other.

I don't know. It's difficult, possibly impossible, to analyze one's own style. I do hope that what I write stands out from the crowd, from a stylistic perspective. Because I believe that I'm not the only reader for whom the manner of expression is as important as the matter.