A review by melissafirman
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips

Did not finish book. Stopped at 30%.
Night Watch was on my TBR before it won the Pulitzer because I apparently enjoyed one of Jayne Anne Phillip's previous novels, Lark and Termite. (I gave it 4 stars but don't seem to have reviewed it, so I can't tell you much more of my thoughts.) And I started off liking this post-Civil War historical fiction novel, too. Night Watch opens with an intriguing scene: a mother and her thirteen-year-old daughter ConaLee are being transported at night to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. The mother is mute -- we get the sense something traumatic has happened - and she's recently given birth but the "babbies" (this pronounciation of babies kind of irked me, TBH) have been left behind. 

So far, so good. I was interested in their back story but it quickly became confusing with time switches and people with two different names and, worst of all, a violent and graphically detailed rape scene. (I'm still a bit shook a day after listening to the audio narration.) From other reviews, it seems that
there are additional assaults yet to come, including of ConaLee
and that was the deciding factor for me to DNF. 
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