Book Report: Night Watch

15. Jayne Anne Phillips, Night Watch (2023) (7/29/25)

That this book won the Pulitzer Prize surprises me—though maybe it just underscores the fact that the Pulitzer isn't a prize I should follow.* 

Why does it surprise me? Because the book is something of a mess. It begins in 1874 with a trio of characters arriving at a "lunatic asylum," introduces a few more, and then abruptly, on page 45, shifts scene and time, going back ten years and introducing several new characters—staying in those stories for another eighty pages. Wait, what happened to the asylum? What are we supposed to pay attention to here? When we finally return to 1874 (and ultimately 1883, in an epilogue), the story's threads gradually begin to weave together, though some remain dangling even at the end, and the climax, where (almost) all secrets are revealed, is breathtakingly abrupt.  

And the writing. Sometimes I enjoyed its lyricism, the rendering of habits of speech, but it often was just too much. Like this, which ends part IV:

He will leave here when time affords and feel no anguish but absence. A blank pulsing thud of heartbeat is the only key he possesses, and it fits no lock. But he's intensely relieved. He thinks of a kite, struggling along the ground, suddenly catching the wind, with the string let out very quickly. He can hear the whistle of air and feel a sensation of buoyancy, as though he gains height over raucous green hills that resound with pleas of mercy.

Huh? Especially toward the end of the book—when I started seeking out published reviews  (am I the only one who doesn't get what's going on?)—the gush of language was just too much. 

But what, you ask, is this book about? It takes place in West Virginia during and after the Civil War. The initial trio, a man, woman, and 12-year-old girl, are seen arriving at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (which still exists as a National Historic Landmark, complete with ghost tours), and part I all takes place there as we learn about the asylum, its function, its personnel. The woman, Liza—now known as Miss Janet—and the girl, Liza's daughter but now known as her nurse, Liza Connolly, settle in, and Miss Janet begins to regain her strength. In part II we follow several characters, the grandmotherly Dearbhla, whose story takes us into her past, where we learn about Eliza and the boy Eliza fell in love with; the "Sharpshooter," who has taken the Union side and whom we see fighting in the war and getting gravely wounded, losing all memory of who he is; the backstory of the man in the initial trio, and how he entered the others' lives; and more. Part III brings us back to the asylum, as the story—all those threads—plays out. It's difficult to describe just what the plot is. The feeling I'm left with is more of having been smothered—or perhaps getting clobbered in the head and left for dead, like the Sharpshooter.

The chief physician of the asylum was a real person, and Phillips occasionally inserts a photo of the place that seems to be the basis for a surrounding description, and I appreciated that concreteness. 

All that said, there were some quite lovely passages, and the rather gothic nature of the story—a bad guy who is very bad, many potentially good actors who nevertheless remain ineffective, hidden gardens and stolen baubles, a fire and bloody murder, and in the last few pages, an interesting reveal—does draw you along. I guess I'm glad I read it. I also guess I wish it hadn't tried so hard.

*As opposed to what—the National Book Award (for which Night Watch was long-listed)? National Book Critics Circle Award? Booker Prize? Should I even care about book awards? Do they represent quality? I tend to think so, but as with so many awards, politics probably enters in as much as worthiness (not politics as in Washington politics, but... playing favorites, making up for past slights, celebrating the underdog, or diversity, etc.). (Here is a piece titled "Did the Pulitzer Prize Make a Mistake with Night Watch? A Pulitzer Prize Deep Dive," which addresses some of these issues.)