The Welsh Girl : A Novel

published	January 14th 2008 by Mariner Books
binding	Paperback
isbn	0618918523 (isbn13: 9780618918522)
ebook
pages	352
description	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,...more [close] 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 [close]
date added	06-23-07 edit book

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Jim rated it:

(review of isbn 0618007008)

06/26/07

Read in February, 2006

recommends it for: Shepherds

Peter Ho Davies’ debut novel, The Welsh Girl, is an historical fiction set in the latter half of World War II in a remote village in Wales. The construction of a secret camp causes much excitement in the village, particularly for Esther, a young barmaid who has fallen for one of the English soldiers tasked with building the camp. The dalliance is particularly volatile because Esther’s father is a staunch Nationalist who views the English as nothing more than Anglo oppressors. Esther’s soli...more Peter Ho Davies’ debut novel, The Welsh Girl, is an historical fiction set in the latter half of World War II in a remote village in Wales. The construction of a secret camp causes much excitement in the village, particularly for Esther, a young barmaid who has fallen for one of the English soldiers tasked with building the camp. The dalliance is particularly volatile because Esther’s father is a staunch Nationalist who views the English as nothing more than Anglo oppressors. Esther’s solider, Collin, promptly takes advantage of Esther and ravishes her, spilling both the secret of the German prisoner-of-war camp as well as his seed. Soon after, Esther has a secret of her own.

Auf Weidersehen Collin, enter Karsten, a dashing young blond German Navy infantryman who is as clever with his hands as he is with his tongue. Despite his fluency in English, Karsten has a rough go of it in the POW camp because he is marked with the secret shame of the capitulator—survivor’s guilt’s hateful cousin. Poor Karsten is afflicted with self-loathing not seen since Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim took a swan dive off the fantail of the Patna, leaving hundreds of passengers to drown.

As the chapters alternate between Esther and Karsten, the two characters are inexorably drawn together until the barbed wire that separates the prisoner inside the camp and the woman inside her tyrannical father’s home becomes metaphor thin. It seems a foregone conclusion that Esther and Karsten will get busy in the haymow, which they do, but after a few days hiding out in Esther’s father’s barn eating food that she prepares for him, Karsten decides to give himself up—again—and is returned to camp.

A curious wrinkle in Davies’s village narrative concerns a German-Jew named Rotheram, an officer in the English Army who is sent to Wales to interrogate Rudolf Hess, the member of Hitler’s inner circle who famously flew the coop in a Messerschmitt Bf 110 and touched down in Scotland in an ill-conceived attempt to negotiate peace with England—without Hitler’s knowledge or approval. The Fuhrer dismissed Hess as a lunatic. Hess professed amnesia and Churchill had the aviator locked up for the duration of the war in a series of safe houses in Wales.

Because so little is known about Hess’s motives, he is an excellent subject for a work of historical fiction. Pairing him with an interrogator who is conflicted about his identity and is in extreme denial about his Jewish ancestry was a masterstroke. But does the story belong in a novel about a shepherd’s daughter?

Davies has a knack for evoking the telling detail but at times he falls prey to the quick and easy characterization: the English soldier who is “glossily handsome, like the lobby card of a film star,” (25) or the bartender wounded in the Great War who walks with a limp but has “never spilled a drop.” (28) Indeed, when we first meet Esther she compares her emotions to the settling of a pint of Guinness, a sentiment that errs on the treacly side of sweet.

Nevertheless, Davies’s characters are marvelously nuanced. Each of the three major characters suffers from a severe conflict of identity. Esther must shield the identity of her baby’s father from her father and invents a relationship with the village’s only casualty to protect her child. Karsten, the son of a fallen war hero, struggles in vain to fill his father’s shoes and win his mother’s approval. Rotheram, the German-Jew, tells everyone who will listen to him that’s he’s not Jewish until the denials transcend falsehood and become farcical. Each one of these characters could carry the novel, but the hero-by-committee approach falls short.

While the organization is a bit of a muddle, by the end of the epilogue all questions have been resolved and the novel’s earlier missteps are redeemed. We even follow Hess to his cell in Spandau where he committed suicide at the age of ninety-three, a cipher ...less

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Jason rated it:

(review of isbn 0618007008)

09/27/07

Read in September, 2007

(The much longer full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

Regular readers know that CCLaP is spending the month looking at the various nominees for the 2007 Booker Prize; and those familiar with the prize know that the only books eligible for it are ones from the British Commonwealth, meaning that Booker nominees each year tend to be very British in tone (duh). In fact, I mentioned last week how it doesn't get much more British than nom...more (The much longer full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

Regular readers know that CCLaP is spending the month looking at the various nominees for the 2007 Booker Prize; and those familiar with the prize know that the only books eligible for it are ones from the British Commonwealth, meaning that Booker nominees each year tend to be very British in tone (duh). In fact, I mentioned last week how it doesn't get much more British than nominee Mister Pip by New Zealander James Lloyd, but it turns out I was wrong; that where it truly, utterly cannot get more British is then with The Welsh Girl, by Welsh novelist Peter Ho Davies, a book so Angloriffic that you can already picture the delicate BBC teleplay that will eventually be produced of it, to the almost sexual delight of all those PBS-obsessed Anglophiles here in the States. I mean, it's a good book, don't get me wrong, one of those perfect hybrids of historical fiction, gooey romance, small-town whimsy and Celtic pride; but I'm telling you, if you're not asking for your biscuits and calling all your friends "guv'nor" by the time you're done, I'll eat a big plate of blood pudding and kidney pie!

Set in the fiercely independent British realm of Wales during World War II, The Welsh Girl in fact opens on the day before D-Day; the day that our titular hero, teenage barmaid Esther Evans, is date-raped by a young English soldier on the eve of being shipped off to Normandy, which Esther doesn't know whether to report or not, because she's not exactly sure what rape is anyway, plus it's sure to rile up the already high tensions among the Celtic-speaking nationalist locals, who resent all the English soldiers being in their village in the first place. And that, ladies and gentlemen, right off the bat tells you a lot about what this entire novel ends up being about; not just an examination of political realities for young, unmarried women in the mid-20th century, but also amongst the backdrop of conservative small-town life, where all aspects of existence are flavored by hundreds of years of off-and-on oppression by a domineering neighbor. This is a very Welsh book, and in fact is a big reason to even read it, is to get swept up in the soaring cliffs and pastoral landscapes, the mystical innate knowledge of sheep and the like. Reading the novel, you can almost hear all the librarians and history teachers in Wales having nocturnal emissions, as pleased as they undoubtedly are to have this new, very vibrant look at their country's past.

Because that's the second important thing to know about The Welsh Girl, that its historical setting of WWII was not just arbitrarily chosen but is integral to the plot; that the main story, in fact, revolves around a German POW camp being temporarily erected at the outskirts of this Welsh village, specifically to house whatever Nazis end up surrendering during the Normandy invasion, happening nearby over the next several weeks. It is as a matter of fact the most exciting thing to happen to the village in something like 400 years, and ends up flavoring nearly every aspect of life there -- from what the mischievous boys of the village do to get in trouble (with many of the boys of course not being true locals, but rather war refugees from London), to the relations between locals and the English MPs who all drink each night at the pub where Esther works, even the arrival of a BBC comedy duo who end up broadcasting their war-themed skits from the area. That's the other reason Welsh history teachers are undoubtedly having wet dreams these days, and I'm sure a big reason why the novel got a Booker nod in the first place; that it evokes the details of those times (ration cards, silk stockings, raid drills) so concretely as to almost transport you there at times.

Davies, in fact......less

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