By Meghan Streit
Award-winning British author Sarah Waters created a dedicated fan base among lesbians with her 1998 debut, Tipping the Velvet. She continued her exploration of lesbian love, lust, adventure and struggle in Victorian London with Affinity and Fingersmith. It has been four years since her last novel, but Waters is back with The Night Watch. Her fourth novel weaves together the stories of four Londoners trying to rebuild their lives after World War II. Waters took some time out of her Los Angeles publicity tour to talk with Windy City Times about her latest novel, her growth as a writer and lesbian culture then and now.
WCT: The Night Watch is a significant departure from your first three works. Can you talk about how it is different as far as the time period and other things?
SW: The time period is the most obvious difference. As much as I love the 19th century, I was interested to see what would happen to my own writing, I suppose, if I made a change. I knew a little bit about the '40s. I was mostly interested in that post-war period. But actually, as soon as I started to research it, I realized that I really didn't know that much. There's a lot of material, about the war in particular. Somehow, the period, in ways that I hadn't quite anticipated, made for a different feel of the book.
The Victorians were really very kind of melodramatic, in a sense, and extravagant, and that's the kind of Victorian fiction I had been used to working with. And so, '40s fiction, by contrast, is very sort of quiet, and pared down. I could tell that was happening to my own writing. It was becoming quieter. So there are certainly secrets and revelations in The Night Watch, but not on the melodramatic scale that they've been in the other books. It's a tightly written novel, and a lot about relationships. And it's also an ensemble piece, and again, that was different to me, because the other books tend to have one narrator or two narrators, at most. And this has a third-person narrator, and it has four main characters, and it sort of moves between their stories. The novel is all about revealing the connections between them, really.
WCT: What made you decide to try something different?
SW: [ It ] was much more about having ... the first three books aren't any sort of trilogy, but there was kind of an arc to them or something. I'd reached the end of a kind of cycle with Fingersmith. It was, in a sense, quite an arbitrary decision to go to the '40s. I wanted to move, but I wanted to go back in time. I didn't want to come into the present. I knew it was going to be something 20th century, and as I've said, it was just something about the '40s. I think all I really ... my way into the '40s was through sort of old movies, to a certain extent—emotional, but very sort of emotionally restrained pictures from the '40s. It was all about me taking on a different political landscape, and a different cultural and emotional landscape, and just seeing what happened when I tried to ... because I knew ... the constant between the books is the lesbian stuff. I was interested in going to a different period and looking for lesbian stories. There are straight stories in the novel as well, but there's a lesbian story at the heart of the book. So, in a way, the process of writing the book wasn't that dissimilar from the way I'd approached the 19th century.
WCT: Were you able to interview lesbian women who were alive during that period?
SW: Yes, I did speak to older lesbians. Of course, they mainly weren't active as lesbians because they were quite young. My own parents are in their 70s, and they were children during the war. So, I could talk to all sorts of old people, actually, about domestic detail and all sorts of things. But for lesbian and gay life, I think it's just that far back that, actually, you need to rely on autobiographies and things like that. But it's fabulous to have those to draw on.
WCT: Your books obviously have lesbian characters and lesbian relationships at their centers, and I know a lot of your readers are certainly lesbian women. Do you consider yourself a 'lesbian writer' and, if not, how do you feel when you're called that?
SW: Well, it's funny, isn't it? You know, I'm a writer, and it's not like I sit down at my computer every day thinking, 'I'm a lesbian writer, I'm a lesbian writer, I'm a lesbian writer.' But at the same time, I do have a lesbian agenda. I have had a lesbian agenda with the books so far. So when people call me a lesbian writer, that's fine with me. It makes perfect sense because I am addressing lesbian issues and I'm an out lesbian. So, I don't have a problem with it. But at the same time, it's only one of a series of labels you could use. You know, ' historical novelist' or just 'writer.' I'm kind of happy if people want to put me in some sort of category, unless ... the downside with labels is that they can sometimes sort of ghetto-ize you and exclude other issues. Certainly in the UK, I've been really lucky to have a strong identity as a lesbian writer, but also a bigger audience, as well. That's partly the result of TV adaptations and things. I know that here, I am probably best known amongst lesbians. I'm kind of happy to be read by anybody, do you know what I mean? [ laughs ] I think most writers would say the same.
WCT: I think that your work can help people to see that lesbian relationships and the emotions that lesbians go through aren't that dissimilar from what everybody else goes through—today or 150 years ago.
SW: Yes, absolutely. And also, it's always been important to me to draw attention to those lesbian stories that have been lost or obscured. I think it's important to know that lesbian and gay people have been around the heart of culture for a long time.
WCT: Absolutely, and kind of similar to that, since many of your characters are very strong women who defy the stereotypes of femininity—especially for the time periods that the books are set in—do you consider yourself a feminist? And how does feminism impact your work?
SW: Oh yes, I certainly consider myself a feminist. That was my way into lesbianism, really. As a young woman, I was very interested in feminism, and lesbianism and feminism seemed a part of one package, in a way. I'm really grateful to have had that sort of way into it, and I still feel quite passionate about feminist issues, as part of all sorts of other issues. And inevitably, that impacted my work. Not to the extent that the books have any ... it's funny, isn't it? Because I wouldn't say that I sit down to write thinking, 'Right, I've got this message that I want to get across.' It's much more that my take on the world is a feminist one. I'm kind of looking for issues around politics, about gender politics and class politics, and things like that. And inevitably, that feeds into the writing.
WCT: I know that you worked on The Night Watch for four years. That was a long time for you, and it must have been a grueling process. Can you talk about the challenges that you faced during the writing process?
SW: Yes, it was quite a grueling process, I think for lots of reasons. It took a long time for me to settle on exactly what I wanted to write about. I think with the other books, each one of them sort of emerged out of the one before it. But probably because I'd made this change of periods and moved to the third person and the cast of characters, and things like that, it took me a long time to figure out, first of all, what's the story I want to tell, and then how technically to tell it. It was a real learning process, which inevitably slowed me down.
And then Fingersmith had done well. It had done very well, particularly in the UK, at exactly the time I was beginning to write the next book, so I had a lot more demands on my time. And I could sense that there was this expectation about the next book, which was really quite worrying when I was a bit stuck, when things were going slowly. ... And also, it's actually quite a melancholy book. A novel like my second novel Affinity, that's quite a bleak book. I never really anticipate the impact that's going to have on me. I got quite melancholy when I was writing the book, because you're kind of continually dwelling on sadness. It's quite hard. ... When I did pull things together, it was incredibly satisfying.
WCT: What authors have influenced you the most?
SW: I'm reading a David Sedaris book at the moment, actually. I quite like David Sedaris. I find him very funny. Obviously, he writes very different things from me, so that's quite refreshing to read something so different. But my favorite writers tend to be period writers, like Dickens and Bronte, 19th century writers when I was doing the Victorian stuff. And then with The Night Watch, I read a lot of '40s fiction and got very, very immersed in a particular kind of British mid-20th century writing. So at the moment, actually I've been looking around at the book shop for something to read today. I feel like I should read something very American. [ laughs ] I do get very inspired. Books and songs, when they're good books and songs, I find very inspiring. It does make me want to go off ... you know, seeing someone else do something incredibly accomplished and exciting makes me want to go off and have a go at doing it myself. It's important for me. I just read all the time.
WCT: You're in the middle of your publicity tour right now in LA. What is that like?
SW: It's great. I love being in L.A. I've never been here before. I've just come here from Australia and New Zealand. I was touring there. It was fantastic to get a chance to go out there and stay in fancy hotels, and meeting readers in different parts of the world who are excited by your work. The downside is obviously that it's tiring. The traveling is tiring, in particular. It's not writing either, which after a while, I begin thinking, 'Wait a minute, I should be at home writing.' [ laughs ]
WCT: Do you have a new book idea in mind or another project that you might take on?
SW: I'm pretty novel-fixated, actually. So I'll be happy to start work on another novel, and I do have an idea. I've deliberately held off, in a way, from starting to explore it because I've been so busy. So I'm letting it sort of simmer away. I think I'll move into the 1950s for the next one.
Sarah Waters will read from and sign copies of The Night Watch at Chicago's Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, Monday, April 10 at 7:30. See www.womenandchildrenfirst.com or call ( 773 ) 769-9299.
Waters will also by on Windy City Radio this Sunday, April 9, 10-11 p.m., WCKG, 105.9 FM, also see www.windycityradio.com
