The Night Watch – Sarah Waters

I found The Night Watch an unsatisfying reading experience, but the fault was primarily my own. I had somehow got the reviews of this book muddled in my head with those of Waters’ subsequent book, The Little Stranger. Consequently I kept waiting for the ghost to arrive, but of course there is nothing supernatural at all I now realise. I rather wrecked it for myself.

That aside, this isn’t half as good as the authors more celebrated Victorian pastiches. The setting here is wartime London (nicely evoked) but the plot is unengaging and could have been told in 200 fewer pages. To be fair, a walk during an air raid and a gruesomely botched abortion are memorable set-pieces.