The Night Watch by Sarah Waters is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read according to one critic, and I am avenged by the algorithm of The Greatest books of All Time for once- over the past weeks, we have been way out of sync – because on The GOAT this is just 7899th, most likely where I would place it on my own list – by the way, you find thousands of reviews of magnum opera from the aforementioned and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read according to one critic, and I am avenged by the algorithm of The Greatest books of All Time for once- over the past weeks, we have been way out of sync – because on The GOAT this is just 7899^th, most likely where I would place it on my own list – by the way, you find thousands of reviews of magnum opera from the aforementioned and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

 

6 out of 10

 

Sarah Waters https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/12/affinity-by-sarah-waters-is-included-on.html has three oeuvres on the list of 1,000 Novels Everyone must read, albeit Affinity is only 3115^th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, where Fingersmith is 1010^th, which may be irrelevant, what matters in this corner is where this reader stands

 

Alas, I did not connect with any of the three books that are allegedly among the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, and it is not Sarah Waters, who is also appreciated on Goodreads, The Night Watch has about 34,000 ratings, and almost four stars on average, nevertheless, it was not enough to take the under signed to the finish line

Oh, spoiler alert – all I had to say, if indeed, there was anything to add, which is always a problem, the main issue here, you have millions of amateurs telling you things, which you need to read elsewhere, anyway, my ‘review’ is finished, I did not feel like Night Watch brings anything different from Affinity, Fingersmith

 

It made me think of https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-secret-history-by-donna-tartt-is-on.html The Secret History, and some other books in the same vein, readable, enjoyable even, but ultimately, rather forgettable, again, this is just a question of personal taste, not a value judgment, nothing would be in this space

I was also thinking of something in an audiobook read by Andrei Plesu, and I cannot remember if it was one of his own, or he was just the reader, and he mentioned this peculiar situation, which I have encountered elsewhere, where various hoi polloi feel like they can made demands upon luminaries, the crème de la crème

 

This woman https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/07/obscenitatea-publica-by-andrei-plesu.html contacts the prominent philosopher and says something to the effect of ‘my husband likes you; it would be nice if you came to his birthday’, then Noica insisted he has about seven hundred days left, is this thing worth one those remaining days?

The same for Night Watch, there are some 520 pages there, even more, and then we also have the Arthur Schopenhauer: ‘One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind." This is just paraphrasing here, the book is not bad, but then it does not overwhelm me either

 

Another quote that might help here is from Kingsley Amis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-kings-english-guide-to-modern-usage.html and it refers to the magnum opus Lolita – ‘The only success of the book is the portrait of Lolita herself’, what would Kingsley Amis say about The Night Watch then?