 Night Watch
AUTHOR: Susan Zettell ISBN: 0921833-74-1
The stories in Night Watch, a new collection from Susan Zettell, delve deep into dark waters. Zettell looks unflinchingly at life's bountiful sorrows: the loss felt by abandoned children, the sudden intrusion of sickness or death, the fierce love suffered by the mother of a troubled child, the journey away from home and the shining, difficult path of return. These are stories about rising to the surface, about bravely striking out and beginning again after loss. Zettell's handling of her characters makes us feel as if this is not fiction at all, but real life floating on the page. Her characters take us with them as they break through to light, and air, and sometimes laughter, finding their obstacles suddenly fluid as water, thin as a pane of glass, and changeable as a heart.
REVIEWS: "In Night Watch, Zettell's sophomore collection of short stories, those familiar with its streets and landmarks will recognize Kitchener in many of the stories. Reading about a city with which one is familiar certainly adds a dimension to the stories, but it's not the most compelling reason to pick up Night Watch.…a reader senses the presence (of) a talented writer with the potential of becoming a major writer. As the title suggests, Night Watch is a dark collection of eight autonomous stories and a quartet of linked stories. But it's neither bleak nor depressing. Indeed, there is loss and abandonment, separation and absence, sickness and death. Cancer runs through the stories like a menacing leitmotif. But these sorrowful experiences are not presented as ends in themselves, but as integral to the process of life. Zettell's characters are immediately recognizable.…We sympathize with their plights and their trials because Zettell presents them with such compassion and understanding. —The Record
"In her second book of short stories, Night Watch, Susan Zettell steps once again onto the familiar terrain of the contemporary family, where illness, drinking, abandonment, rebellion and death place strains on relationships. She writes clearly and convincingly about the inevitable results: divorce, loneliness, mental and emotional dysfunction. Zettell compels us to pay attention to her fictional parents, spouses, children who, less carefully observed, might appear to be managing the uncertainties and infidelities—of their own making or beyond their control—that circumscribe their lives and threaten to erode family bonds." —Prairie Fire
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