In a small village in North Wales in 1944, seventeen-year-old Esther works behind the bar at the Quarryman's Arms with her boss, Jack. Her father, a sheep farmer, spends his evenings in the pub's Welsh-speaking public bar, while the "lounge" side of the pub is full of Englishmen - sappers mostly, soldiers who were sent to this out-of-the-way place to build something secretive. Esther has been seeing one of these sappers, a young man called Colin - it is the closest she can get to her dreams of seeing the world. The war is both distant and ever-present; while few of their young men have signed up - Rhys, a clumsy, slow-witted young man who worked on her father's farm and who had asked to marry her is one of them - there is rationing, the drone of planes overhead, and the presence of soldiers. They listen to Churchill on the wireless in the evenings, but not even the war against Nazi Germany can dull the clash between the Welsh locals and the English interlopers.Karsten is German, an only child whose father is long gone, a tall, strongly-built young man who happily signed up for Hitler's army. He even became a corporal and could have gone far if he hadn't been posted to one of the beaches that were targeted by the Allied forces on D-Day. Overwhelmed, he surrenders and is sent over the Channel with the other prisoners-of-war to England, and then Wales, where he is kept in the brand-new POW camp outside Esther's village. The camp is just over the hills of her family's farm, and the boy, Jim - an evictee from England who lives with them - joins a group of older boys who taunt and heckle the prisoners. From London comes Captain Rotheram, a half-Jewish German whose mother was Canadian. He fled Europe several years before and has been working with Colonel Hawkins, first as a document translator (his German is superior), and later helping Hawkins interrogate the prisoners. He is sent to Wales where the high-up Nazi leader Rudolf Hess is being stored, ostensibly to ascertain whether he's faking his amnesia in order to have him stand trial for war crimes later in Nuremberg. From there he is sent north to a small village with an un-pronouncable name, where one of the POWs has escaped.As these three connect, they come to question their loyalties and their place in the world, as well as their notions of right and wrong.After a fascinating, lengthy prologue from several months ahead in time (September 1944), where Rotheram goes to see Hess, the story steps backwards to June and takes up Esther's story. From there it is mostly quite slow - or I should say, Esther's side of the story is quite slow, and I didn't find that Davies wrote this female character as strongly and capably as he did Rotheram and Kerstan. It was hard to get close to her, even when she let us see inside her mind and soul. She was a sympathetic character - the lonely motherless girl who yearns for travel and adventure, with a taciturn father who'd rather work at the quarry, if it were open (it's being used to store treasures from the National Gallery instead), than farm sheep. Her thoughts towards others are often quite harsh in the way of teenagers, and yet with her responsibilities of running the house and working at the pub, and being a pseudo-mother to young, difficult Jim, she's no teenager, not really. For as strongly as she comes across, as a character, I could never get close to her. I never had a moment of bonding, woman-to-woman. In contrast, Karstan was the character I wanted more of. It's not often you get English-language historical fiction that explores the German side (Hans Fallada comes to mind), and it's even rarer to find a largely sympathetic portrayal of a Nazi soldier. But it is the Nazi side that I am often most curious about, precisely because it's less explored. And Karstan was a surprisingly heroic character - not surprising because he was a Nazi, just surprising in the context of the story. He has charisma, he's physically attractive, and he shows that right and wrong are in the eyes of the beholder, so to speak. He didn't believe Hitler was wrong - though his loyalty isn't as staunch as the other POWs - but as to what he really did/does think, Davies ducks that bullet. It was a bit of a let-down, that Davies doesn't tackle the psychology of the Nazi side. He subtly nudged it a bit, but mainly avoided going down that road. This left Karstan disappointingly flat as a character, by the end.And then there's Rotheram, who really only makes an appearance at the beginning and at the very end. He has several confronting conversations with Hess - Hess provides the most enlightenment of the Nazi psychology, even if he claims to have no memory of ever being Hitler's right-hand-man - and Hess makes him face his own racism towards the Jews. Rotheram's mother was an ethnic German whose family migrated to Canada years before, his father a German Jew, but he refuses to acknowledge this side of his heritage and denies that he is Jewish at all (he doesn't appear to be Jewish in the religious sense of the word, but it wasn't religion that the Nazis were upset about but being Jewish). It is Hess who makes him realise that his denial speaks loudly to his anti-Jewish sentiment, which makes him no different from Hess. It was the most interesting psychological part of the whole novel.Esther finds herself "compromised" by Colin - she won't call it rape because, as she understands it, women who are raped are also murdered - and this alters everything. But it is her relationship with the POW that gives the story is main plot and thrust, propelling the story forward. Otherwise, it's not a plot-driven story so much as it is an exploration of culture clash, between the British and the Germans and between the Welsh and the English. As a look inside Welsh culture - in the 40s at least - it's very enlightening. It explores the concept of Welsh nationality, often using sheep as an analogy, and what it means to be Welsh (and the meaning behind the derogatory slang term, "to welsh" or "welch", which I'd never stopped to think about before). By the end of the novel the main theme that came across is a fundamental basic principle: people are people, no matter what ethnicity you are or country you come from - or what side of a war you are on. At the end of the day, there's very little separating people from each other, and much of what's there needs to be constantly kept alive by fanning the flames of hate and fear and contempt. In that regard, it was a successful, well-written story. I just wish Davies had written his characters as strongly as he did his themes.
Sometimes a book is a delight to discover. I found this novel to be beautifully written and immensely enjoyable to read, the characters are so well drawn and I cared about them all, because of how the author allows us into their deepest thoughts, and concentrates on developing the main characters, Esther and Karsten, and also Rotheram, so fully and effectively. I cared so much for the futures of Esther and Karsten the more I read of the novel, willing them to make good somehow. The gentle build up to the interlinking of the lives of these is beautifully, cleverly done.Esther works in a pub in the village, as well as attending to farming duties with her father, as her mother is no longer with them. Additionally they take in evacuees, the latest one being Jim, who develops a natural curiosity about the POWs when they arrive on the outskirts of the farm, and he forms a fleeting attachment to one of them, Karsten. Soldiers and Welsh locals drink uneasily alongside each other in the pub. At the start of the novel, Esther has formed an attachment to Colin, one of the 'sappers' deployed there from England. Rotheram meanwhile, is sent to Wales to attempt to derive information from Rudolf Hess who is secretly being held there, and claiming a form of amnesia. Eventually, the paths of Esther, Karsten, and Rotheram will pass, but I won't say anymore about the plot, let the reader discover. Only to say I especially liked the character of Karsten, feeling the drudge of the life in the camp, the endless waiting for some news of a letter, the outside world, and seeing how he viewed the events, what he had been fighting for, and what surrender meant to him.The backdrop to the events was, for me, described just enough to really give the reader a chance to feel immersed in the surroundings and social circumstances of the day, but never overly lengthy.The themes covered, including the nature and traditional vocations of Wales, patriotism, national identity and pride, bravery/cowardice and surrender, with the setting in time of the later end of World War Two, and in location primarily of a village in North Wales. We learn of how the sense of place is applied to a shepherd's flock in his field, and how those within the novel, in particular the German soldier, Karsten, and the now 'English' Rotheram, are thinking about where they fit in, about belonging somewhere or nowhere, and about how and where the lines of nationality and belonging are drawn.I felt I gained a valuable insight into aspects of people living in wartime through this novel, and learned about people. Gentle and brilliant.
Do You like book The Welsh Girl (2007)?
I was rather underwhelmed by this novel. It starts promisingly with a guy interviewing Hess after his flight to the UK, but then the story switches to the Welsh Girl of the title. Esther is a farmer's daughter, naive and rather annoying at times. The story follows her life in relation to a childhood sweetheart, a Sapper based at the POW camp and one of the prisoners. The second strand of the story follows the German prisoner camp. The two stands meet but not to any significant degree. The pace was slow and I appreciate the novel was trying to be literary with drama rather than action, but I just became bored. There were some nice descriptions of the Welsh lifestyle which I found evocative of the time period. The epilogue switches back to Hess and a long diatribe about the war, whose only purpose seems to be to convey a simplistic British good, German bad message.
—Suzy
I seem to have read too many war stories and they meld together. This story was too disconnected with the jumping back and forth of the different story lines, and the ending attempted to bring them all together. The setting provided a wonderful description of Wales and the Welsh people, but the character lacked depth. So many of the story lines had choppy events that transpired with no clear sequence. And of course, the Germans are portrayed as mean, inhumane creatures that batter their own troops. The story needed to be longer to give justice to the three characters, instead of flitting here and there.
—Debbie Maskus
I wanted to love this book. I really, truly, desperately wanted to love it.I've been having a huge craving for WWII historical romance and goddamn if this book didn't sound like it'd fix that perfectly. (I have yet to muster up the courage to read The Bronze Horseman because I've heard it's really long and hits you right in the feels and I'm not sure I'm ready for eight hundred pages of emotional stress.)This seemed like it would be much more manageable.The story is split into three different storylines following three different characters: 1) a Welsh girl, 2) a German POW being kept in a prison in Wales, and 3) a German Jew who is (for some reason) sent to Wales because (conveniently) there is a German high-ranking officer being kept there who (conveniently) has no memory of anything he's done.The first chapters were some of the most confusing things I've ever read in my entire life, with practically nothing being explained and a whole bunch of characters discussed without really a proper introduction. I'm honestly not even sure what happened for the first fifteen pages or so.That wasn't the part that first got to me though. I pushed through it, because really, it's the beginning of a book we can't be expected to know everything that's going on yet. I held out hope. Then came our introduction to Esther.Esther is a bright young teenage Welsh girl and possibly one of the most frustrating characters I've ever encountered.Right in the beginning of the book, she's raped by her prat of an English soldier boyfriend who she's known for two weeks. Of course, Esther doesn't actually believe she's been raped because (get this) people can't survive rape.From there, the book felt like it dragged on forever and I could feel myself ageing as I read.Esther spends her time moaning about her life and being a downright bitch about a boy who proposed to her before being shipped off to the war. POW Karsten spends his time doing pretty much nothing because he's in a prison camp. Everyone smokes a lot. About two-thirds the way through, things picked up a bit and I got a taste of my desired WWII historical romance for about thirty pages (view spoiler)[during which our lil Welsh girl goes from talking to our German POW for all of about ten seconds before deciding to sleep with him (hide spoiler)]
—Emily
