Review of NIGHTWATCHING by Tracy Sierra

 3 Stars

This novel received a lot of publicity when it was a Jimmy Fallon book club pick. I think it’s been over-hyped.

A mother is home with her two young children, aged 8 and 5, during a blizzard. When she realizes there’s an intruder in the house, the three of them hide in a tiny secret compartment in their old house. She has to keep her children quiet so as not to alert the intruder. When she realizes who he is and what he wants, her fear intensifies. Even after not finding them, he doesn’t leave and resorts to taunting her. When an opportunity arises, she flees the house to find help.

Because the book plays on our fears of a home invasion with the lives of children threatened, there is a lot of tension. The problem is that the reader is frequently pulled away from the danger by the woman’s thoughts and flashbacks. For example, when she senses the presence of the intruder, she starts thinking about her son’s nightmares and how she and her husband dealt with them. Such thoughts at that time are unrealistic. The flashbacks to her past are interesting but, again, because they interupt events, they lessen the level of suspense.

What is emphasized by these flashbacks is that the protagonist has been patronized and disbelieved by many men. Even her husband questions her interpretation of an event involving her father-in-law. The author examines what happens when a woman is not believed, but the amount of gaslighting and victim-blaming is over the top. She is thought of as “irresponsible, culpable, suspect” and lying, exaggerating and hysterical. Though the father-in-law and the police are especially good at denigrating her, it’s difficult to find any man with mostly positive qualities.

There are a number of elements that irked me. The characters are not given names; they’re only identified as daughter, son, father-in-law, husband, etc. The only person named is the intruder and he is called Corner. Why he’s assigned this designation is obvious, but it’s just weird. The misogynistic, incompetent police trope becomes ridiculous and annoying. And the reactions to the woman’s vitiligo are also extreme: she’s described as disfigured and questioned about contagion.

This is a debut novel and it has the weaknesses of a novice writer. Some will find it a suspenseful thriller, but for me the most frightening thing was the reminder that “suffering and misfortune fall as wide and uniformly as snow.”