I was greatly anticipating the announcement of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and made a video speculating what books might be listed for this year's prize. When “Night Watch” by Jayne Anne Phillips was declared the winner I was highly intrigued because personally I'd never heard of this novel before. Some readers I follow who had read this novel were disappointed by this winner, but nevertheless I went into reading it with an open mind. Unfortunately I found reading the novel to be a frustrating and disappointing experience. The plot is not only melodramatic but often feels like a cliched soap opera with double identities, amnesia, separated lovers and a dramatic fire/physical altercation. Of course, these can be elements in great literature but this novels feels somewhat like an unsuccessful mashup of “Wuthering Heights” and “Rebecca” set during the American Civil War. Its heavy reliance on coincidences and artificially conjured emotional situations makes it seem like a cheap and facile imitation of an epic tale.
The story is primarily set at the Trans-Alleghany lunatic asylum in West Virginia in the year 1874 and follows the gradual recovery of a mother named Eliza who is so mentally unwell she's nearly comatose at the novel's beginning. Her teenage daughter ConaLee joins her at the asylum, but pretends to be Eliza's carer because family aren't allowed to live with patients. Both mother and daughter take pseudonyms while at the asylum. Prior to their time at the facility they've been captives of a tyrannical scheming Confederate soldier who insists on being called Papa. The narrative occasionally flashes back to a decade prior at the end of the American Civil War to show different characters' points of view including Eliza's lover John, a wounded Union soldier, and Dearbhla, an Irish healer. There's also an orphan boy nicknamed Weed dwelling at the asylum who oversees many events which occur between the characters. Eventually true identities are revealed, a professionally questionable romance forms and everyone goes on a jolly carriage ride.
The Pulitzer simply declared this to be “a beautifully rendered novel” and in a Publisher's Weekly interview Phillips described wanting the reader to “understand the history of another time, to appreciate it—and the best way to understand,” she says, “is fiction. I want to write scenes where the reader can feel the shattering moments.” There are certainly shattering moments including an unnecessarily extended rape scene whose gruelling nature points to why Eliza is psychologically destroyed. However, I didn't feel the story sufficiently conveyed the dynamics of this long-term abusive situation and I was left with a lot of questions which it felt like the authors skipped or avoided. Despite giving a sense of the facility including reproductions of photographs and documents, I didn't understand how the hospital operated. I don't understand why ConaLee was denied from knowing about her true father for so long. Eliza's neighbour Dearbhla is the kind of character I'd normally be intrigued by and want to read about, but her involvement in the plot felt forced. There was a lot of potential in the story regarding revelations about John O'Shea and Weed's ambiguous nature and origins, but these didn't feel sufficiently developed.
The momentum of the book rests in the damage of the past and this is embodied in the monstrous figure of Papa. However, the primary action takes place in the present as Eliza slowly heals and the story leads to an artificial confrontation. Of course it's inspiring to find that there existed a facility at the time which was so caring to its mentally ill patients as most such institutions during this period were cruel and abusive. But the story and the choice to focus on this benevolent facility don't give much insight into this period of history. Or, rather, they suggest a simplistic sense of hope amidst a devastating period which left many casualties. Consider the example of Keneally's “Schindler's Ark” which highlights an inspiring example of humanity amidst a genocide. Yet the book also doesn't shy from portraying the complex cruelty and destruction of this period of history. “Night Watch” only offers a flattened version of the past with a syrupy plot designed to suggest that benevolence ultimately prevails, but this has little to do with reality of war or its aftermath.
