The Night Watch leaves you with the sense of having read something rich and complex pared down with consummate skill by a first-class storyteller into a series of deceptively simple tales of love. Which is a fancy way of saying that Sarah Waters' latest offering lingers on, long after the .final page and its first,most fateful meeting.

Tender and tragic, set against the turbulent backdrop of wartime Britain,The Night Watch is the extraordinary story of four Londoners: Kay, who wanders the streets in mannish clothes, resdess and searching... Helen, who harbours a troubling secret...Viv, glamour girl, recklessly loyal to her soldier lover...and Duncan, an apparent innocent,struggling with demons of his own.

Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit liaisons and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, this is an astonishing novel.