I forgive you Sarah Waters. Not that you probably care, but after hating Tipping the Velvet so very much, I was happy to enjoy The Night Watch with the delicious passion I felt towards Fingersmith.
I forgive you too for writing a book 470 pages long and, I suppose, for my own audacity in thinking that I could finish it in one day for my Book A Day challenge. But the prose is so easy-going, the story, about Londoners during the war, so addictive, that I left television behind for the evening and kept on reading.
I even forgive you for telling me the story backwards, for starting in 1947 with the end and then doling out the background in the subsequent sections from 1944 and 1941.
But most of all, I thank you for showing me a London that my grandmother lived through, bombs, air raids, night watch wardens, soldiers on leave, love stories told in the dark, torches, and terror.
It’s a truly great piece of fiction.