Night Waking

[Pos1]

I bought Night Waking by Sarah Miss after seeing it recommended in here but am having trouble with it. I'm just kinder half way through but find everyone so miserable in it I am thinking of giving up. The letters are interesting, but the relationship between the husband and wife just winds me up.......is it worth persevering?

Personally I would say yes, keep going.

I first stumbled upon this at my library a few years ago, liked the cover and the synopsis sounded interesting, so thought I'd give it a go. I'd never heard of Sarah Moss before.

I got through it really quickly, as I found it so easy to relate to Anna, and her constant battle with her home/work life. She has never-ending patience with her children, and for some reason that is a characteristic in her character that I really grew to admire.

You're right in that the characters all seem to be battling with their own personal demons, thus they come across as miserable and maybe quite self-centred. But I would encourage you to keep reading, because as the story develops and moves to it's conclusion things start taking a new direction and by the end I felt some uplifted.

I shan't say any more for fear of spoilers, but suffice to say that I went out and bought a paperback copy for myself and have read it again in recent months. Also, having enjoyed Night Waking so much, I have now added the rest of Sarah Moss's fiction novels to my collection of paperbacks on my bookshelf.

I shall be interested to see if you finish it and what your opinion is at the end.

Ok thanks - I will persevere with it. I did give up and read an Isabel Allende book and now have moved on to another one, but will go back and carry on. Will update....

I enjoyed it, but Anna really got on my nerves sometimes. She should have stayed in Oxford and written her book while Moth was in nursery, or had an au pair on the island or at least a TV.
I have a book on St Kilda that I want to read now.
I also liked how the novel addresses environmental issues. I haven't read that many that do.

I started off really disliking it as I thought that Anna was being held up as an "everymum" figure, and I wanted to walk into the book and shake her for being so bloody annoying.

As I read further, and started to appreciate how Anna's story is complemented by the other, older stories in the book, I realised that Sarah Moss is much more subtle than that. The effects of isolation, the role of women in society and the idea of "women's work", the choice of modern middle-class parents to do without labour-saving devices (their terrible snobbery about shop-bought bread when Anna seems to spend her whole day making awful bread by hand) - there are a lot of layers which explain why Moss made Anna, and Giles, the characters that they are.

I liked reading her Mumsnet chat:

"I couldn't live like that either. But it was cathartic to write about it - what would happen if I didn't sweep that floor / plan that meal / wash that child's hair? And I really wanted to write from the point of view of someone who was teetering on the edge of socially unacceptable parenting, because - as this thread proves - our society is good at judging women who fail to meet certain standards and not very good at understanding how it happens."

KeithLeMonde, interesting and thoughtful points you make there.

As an aside to the OP, there are 2 more by the author - Bodies Of Light, and Signs For Lost Children - that tie in quite nicely with Night Waking, although they are both set in a time way past in history.

I really enjoyed it!

I enjoyed it too (but she should have bought a breadmaker )

I finished it last night. I still felt that the whole novel was just populated by miserable characters but there was some hope at the end. I also got frustrated with Anna and her husband - I think that they both annoyed me by just not changing things.
Whilst I was reading this also read a book by Isabelle Allende with a focus on immigration and South America, a book by Jodi Picoult with a focus on race relations and a book by Kit de Waal also about racism (not explicitly) and I didn't find these as miserable. Maybe it was the oppressive weather in the book . Anyway, I can't make up my mind about whether I liked it. I didn't dislike it, but not sure I'd rush back for it.....

Yes, I agree they were all quite miserable, especially Judith and Zoe. I did see some hope for Anna at the end when it appeared she would be on track to get an academic job. I am sure Giles could get a student to come and help him study the puffins. I'm sure that Skomer and Lundy and those kind of places who advertise for long-term volunteers aren't short of applications.