nialiversuch's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Child death, Emotional abuse, Alcohol, Body shaming, Classism, Colonisation, Death, Eating disorder, and Grief
Moderate: Animal death
Minor: Sexual content and Abortion
sadiereadsagain's review against another edition
4.0
Having read and adored [b:Summerwater|52185452|Summerwater|Sarah Moss|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1583585394l/52185452._SY75_.jpg|71231284] last year, I was excited about reading more of Sarah Moss' books. This one in particular seems to have been almost written exactly for me - set in Scotland, a mother struggling with juggling work and children, an 1800's midwife....like, all of the yes.
This is the story of Anna, an academic with two young sons who is staying with her husband on his family's Scottish island. She is trying to finish a book on which her career - badly hit by motherhood and a stuffy, patriarchal institution - hinges, but struggles to give her work attention amongst the caring, cleaning and cooking responsibilities of raising kids with a, quite frankly, useless husband. Her desire to be alone and her conflicting feelings about her role as a mother weigh heavily on her. She is further distracted from her work on the discovery of a baby's skeleton, unearthed in their garden, and the dysfunctional family that arrive as the first visitors to their holiday let. Alongside Anna's story, we have letters sent in the 1800's, by a young midwife who has been tasked with bringing modern medicine to the island. She comes up against stoic, silent resistance from the crofters, and finds herself facing a losing battle against tradition, superstition and a language barrier she hasn't tried to navigate before finding herself alone in the landlord's house.
I am always interested in an honest look at the challenges and feelings that mothers come up against. The mythical perfect mother doesn't exist, and deep down we all know this, but the pressures and expectations persist. Anna loves her children, but simultaneously feels that she is failing and longs to escape. We are given unfiltered access to her thoughts, and I found her incredibly refreshing and funny. Although her life is a privileged one, and she often doesn't give herself credit for her almost ceaseless patience, I could absolutely recognise her internal struggles and resentments.
I think anyone picking this up expecting a mystery story will be disappointed - this is pure literary fiction, and the discovery of the baby is really a means into the history of the island and the treatment of the English family (that of Anna's husband) to its inhabitants. I really enjoyed the letters from the midwife, and finding out just who the baby was. I thought this aspect of the story gave a really good look into the realities of those living in the Highlands at the time, and the brutality of first their conditions and then the Highland clearings. We learned about this aspect of our history at school, but stories such at this really bring the social issues to life far more than history class. It also raises good points about the benefits that people are still enjoying, even now, of colonialism and treating other humans like property, like cattle.
As I knew to expect, Moss' writing was just as good in this book as in Summerwater. Atmospheric, keenly observational, and classy whilst still having an acerbic wit. She definitely is now one of my favourite writers.
This is the story of Anna, an academic with two young sons who is staying with her husband on his family's Scottish island. She is trying to finish a book on which her career - badly hit by motherhood and a stuffy, patriarchal institution - hinges, but struggles to give her work attention amongst the caring, cleaning and cooking responsibilities of raising kids with a, quite frankly, useless husband. Her desire to be alone and her conflicting feelings about her role as a mother weigh heavily on her. She is further distracted from her work on the discovery of a baby's skeleton, unearthed in their garden, and the dysfunctional family that arrive as the first visitors to their holiday let. Alongside Anna's story, we have letters sent in the 1800's, by a young midwife who has been tasked with bringing modern medicine to the island. She comes up against stoic, silent resistance from the crofters, and finds herself facing a losing battle against tradition, superstition and a language barrier she hasn't tried to navigate before finding herself alone in the landlord's house.
I am always interested in an honest look at the challenges and feelings that mothers come up against. The mythical perfect mother doesn't exist, and deep down we all know this, but the pressures and expectations persist. Anna loves her children, but simultaneously feels that she is failing and longs to escape. We are given unfiltered access to her thoughts, and I found her incredibly refreshing and funny. Although her life is a privileged one, and she often doesn't give herself credit for her almost ceaseless patience, I could absolutely recognise her internal struggles and resentments.
I think anyone picking this up expecting a mystery story will be disappointed - this is pure literary fiction, and the discovery of the baby is really a means into the history of the island and the treatment of the English family (that of Anna's husband) to its inhabitants. I really enjoyed the letters from the midwife, and finding out just who the baby was. I thought this aspect of the story gave a really good look into the realities of those living in the Highlands at the time, and the brutality of first their conditions and then the Highland clearings. We learned about this aspect of our history at school, but stories such at this really bring the social issues to life far more than history class. It also raises good points about the benefits that people are still enjoying, even now, of colonialism and treating other humans like property, like cattle.
As I knew to expect, Moss' writing was just as good in this book as in Summerwater. Atmospheric, keenly observational, and classy whilst still having an acerbic wit. She definitely is now one of my favourite writers.
sonham's review against another edition
3.0
Auf dieses Buch wurde ich über ein YouTube-Video aufmerksam und die Inhaltszusammenfassung klang interessant genug, geht es doch schließlich um (vielleicht ) einen Mordfall an einem Säugling.
Allerdings findet die Entdeckung des Babyskeletts erst relativ spät in der Geschichte statt und bis dahin kämpfte ich mich durch die genervten Gedanken einer gestressten Mutter, die liebend gern Familie und Karriere unter einen Hut bringen würde, deren Mann allerdings nicht sehr unterstützend ist und seiner eigenen Arbeit auf der einsamen Insel nachgeht.
Ihre Kinder sind zwei und sieben Jahre alt und erfordern, wie das nun einmal in diesem Alter so ist, ununterbrochen die Aufmerksamkeit von Anna. Während der Kleine noch recht süß geschildert wird, fand ich den Älteren mit seinen Weltuntergangsszenarien ein wenig zu altklug und zu „bemüht“ beschrieben. Er wirkt auf mich nicht sehr kindlich, sondern eher wie ein „humorvolles Element“ in einer sonst sehr angespannten Erzählung.
Der gruselige Fund ist in diesem Buch eher eine Nebensache. Vielmehr geht es um Familiendynamiken, das Aufziehen von Kindern, welche Auswirkungen es auf den Einzelnen hat und wie früher damit umgegangen wurde.
Es ist sicherlich kein uninteressantes Thema, aber mich hat die Story zu sehr angestrengt. Es passierte zu viel neben der Story der Protagonisten, es gab zu viele Zeitsprünge, zu vielen andere Schauplätze, die sich nach und nach entwickelten.
Vielleicht muss man Mutter kleiner Kinder sein, um dieses Buch schätzen zu können, um sich eventuell selbst darin zu entdecken und Spaß am Lesen zu haben.
Ich selbst habe leider keinen rechten Zugang zu „Night Waking“ gefunden.
Allerdings findet die Entdeckung des Babyskeletts erst relativ spät in der Geschichte statt und bis dahin kämpfte ich mich durch die genervten Gedanken einer gestressten Mutter, die liebend gern Familie und Karriere unter einen Hut bringen würde, deren Mann allerdings nicht sehr unterstützend ist und seiner eigenen Arbeit auf der einsamen Insel nachgeht.
Ihre Kinder sind zwei und sieben Jahre alt und erfordern, wie das nun einmal in diesem Alter so ist, ununterbrochen die Aufmerksamkeit von Anna. Während der Kleine noch recht süß geschildert wird, fand ich den Älteren mit seinen Weltuntergangsszenarien ein wenig zu altklug und zu „bemüht“ beschrieben. Er wirkt auf mich nicht sehr kindlich, sondern eher wie ein „humorvolles Element“ in einer sonst sehr angespannten Erzählung.
Der gruselige Fund ist in diesem Buch eher eine Nebensache. Vielmehr geht es um Familiendynamiken, das Aufziehen von Kindern, welche Auswirkungen es auf den Einzelnen hat und wie früher damit umgegangen wurde.
Es ist sicherlich kein uninteressantes Thema, aber mich hat die Story zu sehr angestrengt. Es passierte zu viel neben der Story der Protagonisten, es gab zu viele Zeitsprünge, zu vielen andere Schauplätze, die sich nach und nach entwickelten.
Vielleicht muss man Mutter kleiner Kinder sein, um dieses Buch schätzen zu können, um sich eventuell selbst darin zu entdecken und Spaß am Lesen zu haben.
Ich selbst habe leider keinen rechten Zugang zu „Night Waking“ gefunden.
foggy_rosamund's review against another edition
5.0
I'm not sure how to rate this book: it raises a lot of different themes, and holds a lot of threads. It doesn't deal with them all well or with enough nuance, but it's gripping, insightful and has a wonderful narrative voice. I found reading it utterly absorbing, though at the end I was left with a lot of questions. The story is set on the fictional Scottish island of Colsay, somewhere out in the Hebrides. The narrator, Anna, is staying on this island with her husband and her two sons. Anna is an academic, and is trying to finish a book about the history of childhood. But her toddler and seven-year-old need constant attention, and her husband absconds every day to study puffins. This is far from a rosy view of motherhood: Anna is constantly overwhelmed by how much she wants to do, so depressed she thinks about suicide, and struggles to feel anything positive towards her two children. Her husband, Giles, concentrates on anything but childcare, and seems not to understand how hard she is working or how overwhelmed she is. Anna feels bitterly resentful towards him, and doesn't know how she can continue to live the way she is.
As the narrative progresses, we begin to see different sides of Anna, and of Giles, but the overwhelming nature of motherhood is a constant theme. We also learn about the history of families on Colsay: the grinding poverty in which families lived in the 19th and early 20th centuries; the cruelty of landlords and the highland clearances; and the infant mortality rate, which was close to 85%. A stack of letters written by a Victorian nurse comes to light during the course of the novel, describing a winter spent on the island, and how the nurse is incapable of understanding the islanders, and the islanders resent her intrusion and concern. These run in counterpoint to Anna's struggles on the island, the ways in which she lives in luxury, and the ways in which misogyny remains the same. The novel also explores the role of landowners in Scotland: Giles' family own Colsay, now uninhabited, and his ancestors were landlords there during much of the poverty of the 19th century. The local people resent Giles and Anna, treating them with hostility -- which at first seems unreasonable, then, as we learn more of the history of the place, begins to make sense.
The story touches on other complex themes: infanticide, ambivalent attachment, teenage anorexia, loss and grief, academia, and doesn't deal with all of them equally well. However, Anna has one of the most memorable narrative voices I've ever read, and I found this book completely engaging. I could hardly put it down, and for that alone, I highly recommend it. It's very memorable.
As the narrative progresses, we begin to see different sides of Anna, and of Giles, but the overwhelming nature of motherhood is a constant theme. We also learn about the history of families on Colsay: the grinding poverty in which families lived in the 19th and early 20th centuries; the cruelty of landlords and the highland clearances; and the infant mortality rate, which was close to 85%. A stack of letters written by a Victorian nurse comes to light during the course of the novel, describing a winter spent on the island, and how the nurse is incapable of understanding the islanders, and the islanders resent her intrusion and concern. These run in counterpoint to Anna's struggles on the island, the ways in which she lives in luxury, and the ways in which misogyny remains the same. The novel also explores the role of landowners in Scotland: Giles' family own Colsay, now uninhabited, and his ancestors were landlords there during much of the poverty of the 19th century. The local people resent Giles and Anna, treating them with hostility -- which at first seems unreasonable, then, as we learn more of the history of the place, begins to make sense.
The story touches on other complex themes: infanticide, ambivalent attachment, teenage anorexia, loss and grief, academia, and doesn't deal with all of them equally well. However, Anna has one of the most memorable narrative voices I've ever read, and I found this book completely engaging. I could hardly put it down, and for that alone, I highly recommend it. It's very memorable.
klaudia_ambrozja's review against another edition
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
fionnanilsson's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
fridao's review against another edition
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0