The Welsh Girl

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
A Richard & Judy Book Club choice

'A beautiful, ambitious novel . . . Emotionally resonant and perfectly rendered, I believed in every character, every sheep, every last blade of grass.' - Ann Patchett

In 1944, a German Jewish refugee is sent to Wales to interview Rudolf Hess; in Snowdonia, a seventeen-year-old girl, the daughter of a fiercely nationalistic shepherd, dreams of the bright lights of an English city; and in a nearby POW camp, a German soldier struggles to reconcile his surrender with his sense of honour. As their lives intersect, all three will come to question where they belong and where their loyalties lie.

Peter Ho Davies's thought-provoking and profoundly moving first novel traces a perilous wartime romance as it explores the bonds of love and duty that hold us to family, country, and ultimately our fellow man. Vividly rooted in history and landscape, THE WELSH GIRL reminds us anew of the pervasive presence of the past, and the startling intimacy of the foreign.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Proclaimed one of the "Best Young Novelists" by Granta on the strength of several award-winning story collections, Davies finally gets around to his debut novel: the tale of a Welsh girl who falls for a German POW incarcerated near her village during World War II. With a national tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Esther, a WWII-era Welsh barmaid, finds her father-a fiercely nationalistic, anti-English shepherd-provincial; she daydreams that she'll elope to London with her secret sweetheart, an English soldier. In short order, Esther is raped by her boyfriend, and her Welsh village is turned into a dumping ground for German prisoners. Meanwhile, Karsten, a German POW who is mortified that he'd ordered his men to surrender, believes that only by escaping can he find redemption. Davies (Equal Love) uses the familiar tensions of WWII Britain to nice ensemble effect: among the more nuanced secondary characters is a British captain who is the son of a German-Jewish WWI hero-the man's father had always considered himself a Lutheran until the Nazi ascension forced him to flee Germany. As Esther begins to question her own allegiances, Karsten comes into her orbit. What makes this first novel by an award-winning short-storyteller an intriguing read isn't the plot-which doesn't quite go anywhere-but the beautifully realized characters, who learn that life is a jumble of difficult compromises best confronted with eyes wide open. (Feb. 12) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Half-Welsh Davies draws on his heritage and a little-known part of World War II history in this beautifully written story of life and love on the outskirts of the war. The stories of three primary characters alternate as their lives intersect: Rotherdam, a British intelligence officer, son of a Canadian mother and German father who was Jewish; Karsten, a young German corporal taken prisoner in France; and title character Esther Evans, 17, who helps her widower father with his sheep farm and works at the neighborhood pub. In mid-1944, English troops finish building a base in the Welsh hills, which--unknown to the locals--will be a POW camp, when Esther is raped by her English soldier sweetheart, with whom she had dreamed of eloping. Karsten, ashamed of surrendering even when the only recourse was death for him and his men, is an English-speaking POW at the new camp who restores his reputation and is aided by Esther when he escapes. And Rotherdam, skilled at interviewing prisoners (among then Rudolf Hess), struggles with his heritage. Dealing with issues of honor, identity, patriotism, and displacement, this centers on cynefin, a Welsh word describing a sense of place or territory for which there is no English equivalent. This first novel by Davies, author of two highly praised short story collections, has been anticipated--and, with its wonderfully drawn characters, it has been worth the wait. --Michele Leber Copyright 2006 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

An unlikely World War II romance is the subject of this ambitious first novel from the Welsh-Malaysian author of the story collections The Ugliest House in the World (1997) and Unequal Love (2000). Following a prologue, in which British army officer Rotheram (son of a German Jewish war-hero-turned-pacifist) is assigned to interrogate captured Nazi officer Rudolf Hess, the scene shifts to a farming village in mountainous northern Wales. Davies gradually connects the shadow of the war to the experiences of teenaged barmaid Esther Evans, whose sheepherder father loudly proclaims his countrymen's ingrained distrust of all things English (including the war effort). Another narrative pattern emerges in the ordeal of Karsten Simmering, imprisoned in the POW camp the English army has built not far from the Evans farm, and guilt-ridden over his decision to persuade the soldiers under his command to surrender. Karsten's agonies of conscience are juxtaposed with the progress of Esther's maturing (she's raped by her boyfriend, a soldier in the British army, and shares the sufferings of the family who have lost their son Rhys--the decent man Esther might have married). The plots coalesce as Karsten escapes, hides in the Evans's barn and draws closer to Esther--with consequences that will compromise his "freedom" and alter her future. The story comes full circle as the completion of Rotheram's mission ironically confirms the likelihood that he, like so many others maimed and transformed by the war, belongs nowhere, and has no identity. The book is overlong and explains too much, but succeeds admirably in its presentation of engaging major characters, each of whom is given a complex and intriguing personal and family history. The result is a rich, moving explication of the ambiguities of duty and sacrifice, courage and perseverance. Not quite The English Patient, but a credible dramatization of a quality too seldom encountered in contemporary fiction: nobility. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.