The Watch Tower

'Harrower's greatest novel [is] The Watch Tower(1966), the bitter story of two sisters, Laura and Clare, who lose their parents and fall under the sway of Felix Shaw, an abusive and controlling drunk...[It is] her masterpiece.' James Wood, New Yorker

After Laura and Clare are abandoned by their mother, Felix is there to help, even to marry Laura if she will have him. Little by little the two sisters grow complicit with his obsessions, his cruelty, his need to control.

Set in the leafy northern suburbs of Sydney during the 1940s, The Watch Toweris a novel of relentless and acute psychological power.

Elizabeth Harrowerwas born in Sydney in 1928. Her first novel Down in the Citywas published in 1957, and was followed by The Long Prospecta year later. In 1959 she began working for the ABC and as a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1960 she published The Catherine Wheel, the story of an Australian law student in London, her only novel not set in Sydney. The Watch Towerappeared in 1966. She was admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead, and is without doubt among the most important writers of the postwar period in Australia. Elizabeth Harrower lives in Sydney.

'Haunting and delicate.' Kirkus Reviews

'This is a harrowing novel, relentless in its depiction of marital enslavement, spiritual self-destruction and the exploited condition of women in a masculinist society...It is a brilliant achievement.' Washington Post

'Haunting...Harrower captures brilliantly the struggle to retain a self.' Guardian

'Each of Harrower's four novels is concerned with entrapment of one sort or another, through family or youth or love. But The Watch Tower,her last novel, is almost like a distillation in its vision of the forces of good and evil. Something runs clear and strong through this wonderful, painful novel, the dark and the light. The victim and the survivor. Suffering and joy. The knowledge of both. Reality.' Joan London, Lit Hub

'Elizabeth Harrower's thrilling 1966 novel The Watch Towercomes rampaging back from decades of disgraceful neglect: a wartime Sydney story of two abandoned sisters and the arrival in their lives of Felix, one of literature's most ferociously realised nasty pieces of work.' Helen Garner, Australian

'A superb psychological novel that will creep into your bones.' Michelle de Kretser, The Monthly

'I read The Watch Towerwith a mixture of fascination and horror. It was impossible to put down...Her acute psychological assessments are made from gestures, language and glances and she is brilliant on power, isolation and class.' Ramona Koval, Australian

'To create a monster as continually credible, comic and nauseating as Felix is a feat of a very high order. But to control that creation, as Miss Harrower does, so that Clare remains the centre of interest is an achievement even more rare. The Watch Toweris a triumph of art over virtuosity...a dense, profoundly moral novel of our time.' H.G. Kippax, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 1966

'As gripping and terrifying as any horror story...An astonishing book.' Guardian

'Harrower's stark examination of two young women's vulnerability and helplessness in the face of a domineering man's savagery is painful to read. I have read it twice now and each time I have been moved by the clarity of Harrower's vision, the terrible plausibility of her characters and the sheer power of the restrained emotion in her writing. It is a novel that deserves the closest and most attentive reading.' Transnational Literature