The Night Watch by Sarah WatersRiverhead (Penguin), 2006

A story told backwards; a story of how people came to be where (who) they are. The start of the first sentence: “So this, said Kay to herself, is the kind of person you’ve become: a person whose clocks and wristwatches have stopped […]” Elsewhere, Kay remarks that people’s pasts are “so much more interesting than their futures”—and I’m not sure I agree, but in the context of this novel, it works. Waters sets her characters in motion and leaves us wondering how they’re all connected, because it’s clear that they must be. That kind of unravelling, that kind of revelation, is just as interesting as a forward-moving plot. (And oh, London-stories, cityscapes!)