Night Watch

Shimmering with ferocious tension, Night Watch explores the nature of identity and the meaning of home, through a thematically linked collection of stories that take place in the Pacific – on its scattered islands and the swathes of sea that separate them. Kevin Armstrong’s perspective is fluid, alternating from that of the islands’ indigenous peoples, to travellers passing through, to the sailor who is at home neither at sea nor on land. Driving every story is the twinned search for one home and escape from another. The characters of Night Watch skirt the uneasy, even treacherous boundaries between what is known and what is longed for, and what is and what might be. In “The Hunga Pass we learn about a Tongan fakaleiti, a boy raised as a girl and then transplanted for a time to the American Midwest. In “The Cane Field we encounter the myriad ways a mother’s love for her daughter can be shredded by cultural and political forces in Fiji. And, in “Inside Passage we learn about a seafaring culture, which is as foreign, and more treacherous, than anything encountered on land. These are haunting tales that dislocate and unsettle, even (and perhaps especially) in their moments of revelation. They are the work of a prodigiously talented young writer.