Fiction: Historical fiction is a difficult genre to write well. Obviously some writers pull it off. A Tale of Two Cities works.
Tolstoy didn't do badly with War and Peace, but even he abandoned a novel set in the era of Peter the Great, finding the effort to understand and describe the psychology of long-gone people too daunting. Why should this have been so? We often know a great deal about the past. There is no lack of sources on Peter the Great, or on London during the Blitz, the setting of Sarah Waters's new novel. The problem seems to be that in spite of all the research, our experience of any time in which we do not ourselves live remains second-hand. The risk with writing fiction about such times is that it will slide into generalisation, which is the enemy of fiction; characters can become stereotypes, and the entire work lack the particularity which is essential for a unique work of art. Most historical novels are literary failures.
Sarah Waters's arrived wrapped in layers of publicity material proclaiming the best-seller status of her previous novels, their popularity as television dramas, and with information about the very large sum of money being spent on its promotion - all the sort of stuff designed to impress booksellers but more likely to annoy a reviewer. One's first reaction is a sour "if the book is any good would you have to spend all that money promoting it?" (I don't know what the answer is. Yes, probably). Since I do not like historical fiction much and had disliked Sarah Waters's successful Fingersmith, which was shortlisted for the Booker and the Orange Prizes and which became a popular television drama, I approached this full of prejudice and foreboding.
And at first the novel fulfilled my low expectations. The opening section has all the vigour of a flat tyre. Lots of vaguely defined characters move around that exhausted literary landscape, London just after the second World War. It is not easy to distinguish between Kay and Julia and Helen and Viv and Duncan and all the rest of them as they picnic on spam, smoke endless cigarettes, and chatter about nothing much. All is lively and good humoured but the characters laugh more often than the reader.
However, everything improves remarkably as the novel progresses, or reverses, on what proves to be an interesting backward track: the opening section is set in 1947, the middle in 1944, and the last in 1941. As the history of the characters is gradually revealed, they cease to be dull shadowy figures. Before our eyes the author fleshes them out, like a conservator who gently removes the grime of years, or one of those black and white photographs that is lovingly coloured in (by a computer programme!). Vibrancy and shade and depth gradually emerge, so that by the end of the novel, which is the beginning of the story, you understand at least Viv and Duncan and Kay very well. It's a wonderful process, an allegory of kinds for the art of the historian.
Essentially the novel is an analysis of the relationships of young people in the context of wartime London, which throws unlikely mates together. Most of the characters are on the margins of society: lesbian, straight but involved in illicit affairs, or possibly bisexual. The social taboos and legal constraints that gay people of the time had to endure are sensitively depicted, as are the difficulties encountered by heterosexuals engaged in relationships not sanctioned by society. (There is a truly harrowing episode involving a botched backstreet abortion.) The injustice of being afraid to hold hands or kiss in public, if one is gay, is mentioned. On the other hand, it is emphasised that there was a tolerance for difference during the war (unless you were a conscientious objector, of course) and that the crisis of the Blitz provided opportunities for fulfilment to the marginalised - especially for women, of whatever sexual persuasion.
Waters is at her best when analysing the intricacies of sexual emotions. She is superb at describing the beginnings of attraction, even better at documenting its endings. There is plenty on the middle, as well - to call the novel a lesbian bodice ripper would be unfair, but it verges on that from time to time. The not infrequent references to silk pyjamas, underwear and stockings aid this tendency; sometimes the novel seems to have difficulty deciding whether it is blatantly popular or properly "literary".
But Waters's clear insight into human emotions, be they gay or straight, and her ability to describe them with almost scientific precision, shifts the balance, lifting the book from the realm of the ordinary, and even from that of the "historical". One ceases to wonder if the characters and their emotions are historically likely: she describes them so convincingly that one accepts their humanity in its particularity and universality. Ultimately, The Nightwatch is a successful, intriguing, and engaging novel.
The Night Watch By Sarah Waters Virago, 473pp. £11.99
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's latest novel for young people, Hurlamaboc, is published by Cois Life