Set in the stunning landscape of North Wales just after D-Day, Peter Ho Davies's profoundly moving first novel traces the intersection of disparate lives in wartime. When a POW camp is established near her village, seventeen-year-old barmaid Esther Evans finds herself strangely drawn to the camp and its forlorn captives. She is exploring the camp boundary when the astonishing occurs: Karsten, a young German corporal, calls out to her from behind the fence. From that moment on, the two foster a secret relationship that will ultimately put them both at risk. Meanwhile, another foreigner, the German-Jewish interrogator Rotherham, travels to Wales to investigate Britain's most notorious Nazi prisoner, Rudolf Hess. In this richly drawn and thought-provoking work, all will come to question where they belong and where their loyalties lie.
Following two widely praised short-story collections, Equal Love and The Ugliest House in the World, Peter Ho Davies's first novel, The Welsh Girl, deserves to be equally well received. It carefully examines two great themes, dislocation and cowardice, through the stories of a WWII POW camp built by the British in the remote mountains of northern Wales and Esther, the 17-year-old Welsh girl at the heart of the story. The POW camp, filled with Germans, is yet another national insult, as far as the Welsh are concerned, only one of many instances of prejudice between and among the novel's characters: Welshman against Brit and vice versa, Brits and Welshmen against Germans, Germans against Jews. Some of these enmities are age-old antagonisms; others are newly-minted political killing machines.
Davies introduces a Welsh concept--cynefin--for which there is no English equivalent. It means a certain knowledge and sense of place that is passed down the matrilineal line in a flock of sheep. They always know where they belong and never leave their own turf. It is a perfect metaphor for much of what takes place in this carefully plotted story, and for the displacement felt by many of the characters. Esther longs to escape her village, yet is devoted to the flock and to her father. She meets Colin, an English soldier, in the pub where she works. He is a rough sort and things end very badly between them.
Another theme visited again and again is the concept of cowardice. Is it cowardly to save one's life and the lives of others by surrendering to the enemy? Is death the price that must be paid to be considered brave? The German POWs debate this endlessly, especially Karsten, an intelligent, sensitive soldier who did surrender himself and his men when it was clear that all was lost. When he and Esther find one another under impossible circumstances, Davies renders their relationship perfectly: it is star-crossed, but desperately important to both of them, setting them both "free" in the truest sense of the word. The Welsh Girl is a beautifully told story of love, war, and the accommodations we make in the midst of both. --Valerie Ryan
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
One of the most Evocative Novels I have Read in Years:
This story of a Welsh girl, a German POW, and the complicated social strictures of small-town life during World War II is one of the most moving stories I have read in years. In prose that is simple in the way that the best poetry often is, Peter Ho Davies delivers Wales in evocative detail, and the feelings of his Welsh and English and German characters, male and female, as if he were each of them. The passage in chapter 13, with Karsten and Jim and the plane, is just lovely. Just lovely.
Distant time, distant story:
It took me over a month to read "The Welsh Girl" - and I'm not sure why. I know I am in the minority in my lukewarm reception of this book (please see "Long-listed for Man Booker Prize"). It's certainly not as if the characters were not well drawn, the time and place carefully crafted, the story less than compelling...and yet...and yet. I suppose the best way to describe my hesitation with this book is that I always felt as arms length. Even when inside the thoughts and hearts of Esther, Karsten and... more info
Displaced Persons:
I found myself liking this book chapter by chapter, but did not feel that it connected up to a successful whole. The time is 1944, in the months following D-Day. The setting is a village in Snowdonia, NW Wales, whose principally Welsh-speaking inhabitants live by quarrying and sheep farming. But the war has brought strangers into the community: young boys evacuated from bombed cities, British soldiers who build a POW camp for German prisoners, and the prisoners themelves. So most of the people in the book... more info
Haunting World War II Novel:
The Welsh Girl is a sensitive and haunting story about enemies and friends during WWII. The exotic setting allows the encounter between German prisoners of war and the "English" to have an almost legend-like quality.
Dwelling on the humanity common to all, it shows an extraordinary Welsh girl's meeting with an English speaking German prisoner. Beautiful descriptions of the countryside, believable dialogue among the German prisoners makes this book shine. But the author, known for his short stories,... more info
