
Night Watch
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Karissa Vacker
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Theo Stockman
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Maggi-Meg Reed
About this listen
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War—and a brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds
"A tour de force."—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.
The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee’s father, who left for the War and never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility—the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.
Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.
©2023 Jayne Anne Phillips (P)2023 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Beautiful, mournful . . . Carefully and engrossingly crafted . . . The good suffer equally with the bad. Phillips’s artistic conscience won’t let her flinch from this truth, but her generous heart won’t let it be the last word. She leaves readers with a rueful yet doggedly hopeful maxim that could easily serve as an epigraph for Night Watch as a whole: ‘Endurance was strength.’”—Wendy Smith, The Washington Post
“A story of trauma and restoration in the aftermath of the Civil War . . . Ms. Phillips presents harrowing, visceral scenes of war, but a lot of this novel relates the daily business of convalescence in an asylum, with loving attention given to the motley staff that tends to the unwell . . . The theme of healing extends to the plot. Ms. Phillips, who is drawn to depicting the poor, the mentally disabled, the wounded and other vulnerable souls, is a principled practitioner of narrative magic. Not only serendipity but a kind of clairvoyance connects the characters . . . Goodness is a real thing in this novel—a verifiable force—and the question posed is whether we still have the sensitivity to discern it.”—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“Phillips is very good at is capturing a sort of inner dialect, conveyed here in a language inflected with a Southern twang, modulated to reflect characters’ social status and degree of education . . . It is when Phillips channels [these] thoughts that the telling, like the story itself, becomes [so] compelling, even beautiful.”—Ellen Akins, Minneapolis Star Tribune
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- Unabridged
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Johnnie Rico never really intended to join up—and definitely not the infantry. But now that he’s in the thick of it, trying to get through combat training harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids. Because everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn’t kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job.
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The definitive version!
- By Kristopher G. Hesson on 10-03-24
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Say No More
- By: Caroline Overington
- Narrated by: Anna Skellern
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
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Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.
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Seriously, that was the ending?
- By alicia in athens on 02-13-25
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Fahrenheit 451
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: Tim Robbins
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
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Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."
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Wish I Hadn't Cliff Noted This in High School
- By Joel on 03-27-17
By: Ray Bradbury
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He Who Fights with Monsters 2
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- By: Shirtaloon, Travis Deverell
- Narrated by: Heath Miller
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
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But Jason Asano is settling into his new life. Now, a contest draws young elites to the city of Greenstone to compete for a grand prize. Jason must gather a band of companions if he is to stand a chance against the best the world has to offer. While the young adventurers are caught up in competition, the city leaders deal with revelations of betrayal as a vast and terrible enemy is revealed. Although Jason seems uninvolved, he has unknowingly crossed the enemy’s path before.
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Contrary to common reviews
- By Karen on 05-21-21
By: Shirtaloon, and others
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Brain Damage
- By: Freida McFadden
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
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Story
As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.
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Who Else Laughed, Cried, and Shuddered?
- By Jennifer Chichester on 09-16-22
By: Freida McFadden
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The House on the Water
- A Novella
- By: Margot Hunt
- Narrated by: Taylor Schilling
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
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Every year, Caroline Reed takes a trip with her best friend, Esme Lamont. They’re usually accompanied by their spouses - but this year, everything’s changed. Esme has just gone through a bitter divorce, and Caroline's wondering if her own marriage is reaching its breaking point as she and her husband, John, cope with the discovery that their son has been abusing drugs. Still, the inseparable duo books a weeklong stay at a beach-front home in Shoreham, Florida, inviting Esme’s brother, Nick, and his new husband. After a blissful first night in the vacation home, tragedy strikes.
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Wonderful Story
- By David M. Wilcox on 12-04-20
By: Margot Hunt
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Mary Jane
- By: Amy Herzog
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- Length: 1 hr and 16 mins
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Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams stars in Mary Jane, a poignant and intimate drama following a single mother’s journey caring for her chronically ill young son. Set in New York City, the play unfolds in two parts—Mary Jane's small Queens apartment and a pediatric hospital. With unflinching honesty and unexpected humor, we witness Mary Jane's tireless devotion, her interactions with medical professionals, and her struggle to maintain her sense of self.
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Amazing performance
- By Andrew Reynolds on 12-28-24
By: Amy Herzog
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The Pearl and the Onion
- By: Brittany K. Allen
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- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
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Overall
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When our story begins, Julia Child is an eager but inexperienced codebreaker longing to prove herself in the male-dominated world of intelligence, and Josephine Baker is, well, Josephine Baker—a world-famous entertainer who is now leading a double life as a spy for the French Resistance. When a golden opportunity arises to infiltrate a high-stakes Nazi gala in Vichy France, Julia must put aside her by-the-book mentality to assist her unorthodox new partner.
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Very enjoyable story
- By C. Wilson on 03-23-25
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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
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The story of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is very difficult to describe. Usually we give some information about the audiobook, but in this case we think that would spoil the listening. We think it's important that you start to listen without knowing what it is about.
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Absolutely Phenomenal!!!
- By Jensophie on 05-04-09
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What listeners say about Night Watch
Highly rated for:
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- E W Sugarman
- 07-09-24
The writing was poetic and mesmerizing
Loved it and so thrilled she was recognized for it. The Pulitzer team is to be commended.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Charlotte D. Mitchell
- 05-11-24
Riveting story!
The story kept my attention from beginning to end. The characters were multi faceted and extremely endearing. The history of the civil war time period was was told from the perspective of both sides. The narrative was at times heart wrenching. It caused me to”cheer-on” the survival and success of the main characters. Highly recommend this wonderful novel!!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Joan Price
- 07-11-24
Extraordinary, deserving of its Pulitzer Prize
Wow. Often contemporary literary fiction asks you to be patient and ease into the story, but not this one. The first minutes gripped me and held me captive until I'd finished. The characters were alive in my mind. The Audible version with multiple narrators is superb.
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- Joseph Mega
- 01-24-25
Disappointing
I make an effort to read the Pulitzer winner every year and I pretty much always find the book engaging and enjoyable. So, I was particularly disappointed by the Night Watch. I never felt invested in the characters. The plot jumped around in ways that made the book feel a bit disjointed and, most importantly, I felt like it was less about the action in the asylum and more about the few characters the book focuses on and their journey there. I was envisioning a story focused on the details of the asylum in the historical context, but we never got there in any depth. I suppose if you really enjoy civil war era fiction, this might be engaging for you, but even then the plot is mostly focused on superficial details of the war and, instead on a few characters who are affected by the horrors associated with it. In the end, I finished this novel since it wasn’t particularly long, but it felt like a chore to me and I wouldn’t recommend it to others. There were many other stand out books I read this year that, I feel, were more deserving of the Pulitzer (see James).
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- Alison, Amazon Customer
- 01-29-25
Exquisitely Descriptive
Beautiful and dramatic in it's content, character descriptions and lyrical narratives. A pleasure to listen to.
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- Sarah
- 10-08-24
A hard listen for me
It probably took me 25 hours to listen to this book… I started it over 2.5 hours in and then continued to hit back constantly throughout. If I didn’t focus solely on the what I was listening to I was lost within minutes. The writing style was hard for me to digest and it felt like a series of sentences at times.
The story was good, I liked the characters, and the narrators were all really good in their roles. I’m glad it’s over though.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Barbara A.
- 07-05-24
The pain and suffering that is forced on so many by war and that family is all.
The true history of the Civil is paramount to this novel. The characters were complicated and rang true. At times the pain of the story became overwhelming.
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2 people found this helpful
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Story
- Matthew Hoffman
- 12-22-24
The suffering of the people in and around the Civil War
I gave up on listening to this over and over and over until I went online and read a basic review, which told me it would get better. So I started listening again and it was most certainly better in the last third of the book it did go way too deep on many many many things which were tremendously superfluous. It was well done overall but took forever to get to the meat and bones of the story
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- Denise McGuire
- 11-22-24
Lunatic asylum
The book was very engaging. Reading about the lunatics asylum was interesting but the ending was not to my liking.
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- Sammirae
- 03-01-25
A bit confusing in presentation
Probably realistic to time period events. Good, unless you want a happily ever after.
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