Short description
* A ghost story from one of Britain's finest and best loved writers. The major literary event of 2009
Long description
After her award-winning trilogy of Victorian novels, Sarah Waters turned to the 1940s and wrote THE NIGHT WATCH, a tender and tragic novel set against the backdrop of wartime Britain. Shortlisted for both the Orange and the Man Booker, it went straight to number one in the bestseller chart. In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his. Prepare yourself. From this wonderful writer who continues to astonish us, now comes a chilling ghost story.
Review
It's a gripping story, with beguiling characters ... As well as being a supernatural tale, it is a meditation on the nature of the British and class, and how things are rarely what they seem. Chilling Kate Mosse, The Times, Summer Read Waters writes with a firm, confident hand, deftly building an atmosphere that begins in a still, hot summer and gradually darkens and tightens until we are as gripped by the escalating horror as the Ayres are. She is particularly good at depicting Hundre Tracy Chevalier, Observer By now readers must be confident of her mastery of storytelling ... While at one turn, the novel looks to be a ghost story, the next it is a psychological drama ... But it is also a brilliantly observed story, verging on the comedy, about Britain on the cusp of modern age ... The writing is subtle and poised Joy lo Dico, Independent on Sunday Displaying her remarkable flair for period evocation, Waters recreates backwater Britain just after the Second World War with atmospheric immediacy ... Acute and absorbing Peter Kemp, Sunday Times