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The Welsh Girl
The acclaimed first novel from one of Granta 's Best of Young British Novelists 2003, a powerful tale of love, war and divided loyalties .
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.
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.
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2007
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About the author
Peter Ho Davies
23 books184 followersPeter Ho Davies is a contemporary British writer of Welsh and Chinese descent. He was born and raised in Coventry. Davies studied physics at Manchester University then English at Cambridge University.
In 1992 he moved to the United States as a professor of creative writing. He has taught at the University of Oregon and Emory University and is now on the faculty of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
He has published two collections of short fiction, The Ugliest House in the World (1998) and Equal Love (2000). His first novel, The Welsh Girl came out in 2007.
Davies is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
In 1992 he moved to the United States as a professor of creative writing. He has taught at the University of Oregon and Emory University and is now on the faculty of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
He has published two collections of short fiction, The Ugliest House in the World (1998) and Equal Love (2000). His first novel, The Welsh Girl came out in 2007.
Davies is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 677 reviews
December 22, 2019
Historical fiction set in northern Wales near the end of WWII involving three primary characters. Esther is a seventeen-year-old whose mother died when she was young. She helps her father run her family’s sheep farm and also works in a local pub. Karsten is a German soldier who speaks English. He is being held in a nearby POW camp and is haunted by his decision to surrender. Rotheram is a half-Jewish German who has fled to England and works as an interrogator of German prisoners, specifically assigned to interview Rudolf Hess. At first, his story seems unrelated, but as the book progresses, we begin to see the impact of his story on the other two.
This is a subtle, slowly developing, character-driven book. The characters are ordinary people brought together during extraordinary times. Each character is faced with moral quandaries and the author keeps the reader’s interest in wondering how these issues will be resolved. The three main characters are very different, yet they are similar in that each is an outcast and each character struggles with doubt, guilt, and fear. They evolve over time, learning through their experiences.
Though this story eventually involves a relationship, it does not sink into sentimentality, and it is not the primary focus of the book. Instead, it is oriented around symbols, such as the Welsh concept of cynefin, a Welsh term connoting the intimate connection between the sheep and the land they occupy. It is not difficult to extrapolate this idea to the people in the story. Themes include nationalism, identity, belonging, freedom, secrecy, honor, courage, and loyalty.
I have always been interested in reading about different parts of the world during the second World War to get a feel for what life was like and how people coped. It is like putting together an enormous jigsaw puzzle, filling in portions at a time to eventually reveal the bigger picture. This book fills in the pieces related to life in the rural Welsh countryside, which is an integral part of the story. I learned a great deal about the history and culture of Wales. I found it extremely well-written, meaningful, and thought-provoking.
This is a subtle, slowly developing, character-driven book. The characters are ordinary people brought together during extraordinary times. Each character is faced with moral quandaries and the author keeps the reader’s interest in wondering how these issues will be resolved. The three main characters are very different, yet they are similar in that each is an outcast and each character struggles with doubt, guilt, and fear. They evolve over time, learning through their experiences.
Though this story eventually involves a relationship, it does not sink into sentimentality, and it is not the primary focus of the book. Instead, it is oriented around symbols, such as the Welsh concept of cynefin, a Welsh term connoting the intimate connection between the sheep and the land they occupy. It is not difficult to extrapolate this idea to the people in the story. Themes include nationalism, identity, belonging, freedom, secrecy, honor, courage, and loyalty.
I have always been interested in reading about different parts of the world during the second World War to get a feel for what life was like and how people coped. It is like putting together an enormous jigsaw puzzle, filling in portions at a time to eventually reveal the bigger picture. This book fills in the pieces related to life in the rural Welsh countryside, which is an integral part of the story. I learned a great deal about the history and culture of Wales. I found it extremely well-written, meaningful, and thought-provoking.
October 26, 2017
The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies is set in a Welsh village near the end of WWII. Davies splendidly sets his story against the backdrop of WWII without weighing it down with too much action or too many war terms. It is also set against a pastoral countryside so there are very lyrical and elegant passages. There’s also a love story between the Welsh girl and the German POW, but it goes beyond that.
What’s most intriguing about this story is that it is driven by the characters’ actions and development during the war. The story is told in third person subjective so that we get an intimate perspective and alternates between Esther, Rotheram, and Karsten.
Esther is a seventeen-year-old Welsh girl who works at a pub serving the Welsh as well as the English soldiers. She’s curious about the POW camp. Rotheram is a German Jew that left to England on his mother’s insistence and became an interrogator. He is sent to the Welsh village to interrogate a supposed Nazi feigning amnesia. Karsten is a German soldier who surrenders and gets sent to a POW camp at a Welsh village. All three of them change and gain something by the end of the novel despite the many tragedies.
For instance, Esther gains a new definition of patriotism: “Why fatherland and not motherland? She’d wondered. But now she thinks: Why should the love of fathers or mothers be equated to love of country? Couldn’t you love your country by loving your children? Weren’t they your nation, at the last?”
Karsten gains a sense of serenity, “He had felt such peace, he was sure it [the war] must be over, that they’d separate and rise to the bright news of armistice. An end to the war that was neither victory nor defeat, just peace.”
Rotheram comes to terms with his identity— “It had never occurred to Rotheram that he could be unashamed of fleeing, of escaping, of living. Of being Jewish—if that was what he was. And suddenly it felt not only possible but right to not be German or British, to escape all those debts and duties, the shackles of nationalism…The Jews, he knew, had no homeland, yearned for one, and yet as much as he understood it to be a source of their victimization, it seemed at once such a pure freedom to be without a country.”
By Claudia Estrada
August 23, 2007
I loved this book. It was a little slow going at first and the first 20-30 pages I had to half-push myself into. Then I got caught up in the story. The language used is beautiful, some sentences so perfect they hurt, but at the same time it doesn't distract at *all* from the story being told. This is a book I read at first primarily for the story and now I want to reread again for the subtle nuances I missed. But it makes me think and it makes me happy and I love the characters - not just how they are drawn and developed but who they are.
Just beautiful.
Just beautiful.
July 16, 2022
I have just one question that has driven me crazy.
I have read so many GR reviews, but no one seems to know...
What the hell... is Hess doing in this book?
He has been interrogated a number of times, that’s obvious isn’t it?
But what is his connection to the other characters in this remote Welsh village?
Left me terribly unsatisfied and pretty much angry.
I have read so many GR reviews, but no one seems to know...
What the hell... is Hess doing in this book?
He has been interrogated a number of times, that’s obvious isn’t it?
But what is his connection to the other characters in this remote Welsh village?
Left me terribly unsatisfied and pretty much angry.
March 28, 2013
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.
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.
June 14, 2016
You’d think I’d have learned by now that just because a book was nominated for the Man Booker prize doesn’t mean I’ll like it. Even though it got good reviews when it was first published several years ago, and even though many other readers have raved about it, and even though the description sounded interesting and even though it had been recommended to me, I just didn’t like it. I probably should have put it aside right away because it didn’t take long for me to realize that I just wasn’t getting into it the way I usually do when I’m reading something that engages me.
Almost from the opening sentences, which sounded a bit hackneyed and cliché-ridden, I had my doubts and was tempted to put it aside. Instead I kept reading right on through to the end and I’m not even sure why. Probably because of the setting setting (Wales), the time period (the Second World War in the months following D Day) and what sounded like a good premise for an interesting story (what happens when a German prisoner of war in remote camp in rural Wales falls in love with the daughter of a fiercely patriotic Welshman?) In the hands of a different writer this might have turned out differently. But unfortunately that didn’t happen here. The characters should have been more carefully drawn and the plot less driven by situations and scenes that were either totally unbelievable or disappointingly predictable.
To make matters worse the book opens and ends with a parallel plot line involving Rudolph Hess, the Nazi war criminal, which might have been interesting except that it was never clear just what, if anything, it had to do with the rest of the novel. I kept wondering why it had even been included. In fact all the way through this disappointing book I kept wondering why I was still reading it. But I suppose if there’s any benefit at all from reading books that are less than satisfying, it’s in knowing there are so many other ones waiting to be read that will be much more enjoyable.
Almost from the opening sentences, which sounded a bit hackneyed and cliché-ridden, I had my doubts and was tempted to put it aside. Instead I kept reading right on through to the end and I’m not even sure why. Probably because of the setting setting (Wales), the time period (the Second World War in the months following D Day) and what sounded like a good premise for an interesting story (what happens when a German prisoner of war in remote camp in rural Wales falls in love with the daughter of a fiercely patriotic Welshman?) In the hands of a different writer this might have turned out differently. But unfortunately that didn’t happen here. The characters should have been more carefully drawn and the plot less driven by situations and scenes that were either totally unbelievable or disappointingly predictable.
To make matters worse the book opens and ends with a parallel plot line involving Rudolph Hess, the Nazi war criminal, which might have been interesting except that it was never clear just what, if anything, it had to do with the rest of the novel. I kept wondering why it had even been included. In fact all the way through this disappointing book I kept wondering why I was still reading it. But I suppose if there’s any benefit at all from reading books that are less than satisfying, it’s in knowing there are so many other ones waiting to be read that will be much more enjoyable.
December 9, 2013
My interest was held by this historical fiction novel set in England at and after DDay. Several really good characters and two stories interwoven -- one in a Welsh village with all its touchy locals & the incomer English and the other about the determination of Rudolph Hess's sanity. The best and most compelling character is Karsten, a German POW captured by surrender on DDAY who was eventually held in a POW camp in the insular Welsh village. He was a very sympathetic character, surprisingly so. His interactions with the London boy sent for safety to Wales & with "the Welsh girl" are both painful and beautiful. The earlier interaction of the girl and an English "soldier" sent to build the camp are just painful. Her naivety is difficult to imagine but believable under the circumstances. I didn't expect to be drawn into the book as I was. There are moving passages; there's so much sadness but not really darkness. I'm still pondering whether or not the common German soldier really didn't know what their hierarchy was up to with the camps until the end of the war. I would like for that to be true. Whatever you believe about that, this is a very good read!
June 6, 2012
"This novel will haunt the reader long after closing the book." That's what the Oregonian had to say about this story, and what I think they meant by that statement was it will haunt the reader that they wasted even one moment on the book. The storyline sounded promising- Welsh girl is drawn to a camp of POW's near her village. Makes you think of the young story of The Summer of My German Soldier, right? Nope. Quite a few story lines that could have been a success, but instead, left me feeling like nothing occurred at all. There was no development of characters so it was impossible to have any sort of closure. I sped through the book simply for the sake of saying I finished it, but not one I'd recommend to anyone else.
October 10, 2018
Wow! Just wow! Such an incredible book. I can't put into words how good it is.
Reviewed by: Mrs. N
My Rating: 5+++++ stars
Reviewed by: Mrs. N
My Rating: 5+++++ stars
April 14, 2011
This novel is about conflicts of nation, loyalty, and identity. Novels trying to construct this kind of story sometimes become cliche, but this one has a very sincere tone that is refreshing. English intelligence officer Rotherham has trouble dealing with his German Jewish heritage. A German officer surrenders under heavy fire, is sent to a camp in Wales, and begins to see the uncertainties of his life overall. A young Welsh woman wonders where the definitions are set - enemy? traitor? fatherland? And where does a woman's future play a part in all this?
Even though telling the story of the Welsh girl is given more breadth, it doesn't necessarily have the most depth. Actually, it is the smaller passages in the book that make this story more powerful. Rotherham's conversations with the war criminal and his own outcome after the war are key to the novel. In the latter part of the story, German soldier Karsten is brought to despair, not by his army's defeat, but ultimately learning what they had fought for. After he watches postwar newsreels of Belsen prison camp, he says "To be fighting for that. And I was ashamed of surrending."
This is a thoughtful story on many levels. Most importantly, it describes the fact that when nations declare war, individuals are not so simply divided into distinct citizenship nor do they form instantly clear personal truths.
Even though telling the story of the Welsh girl is given more breadth, it doesn't necessarily have the most depth. Actually, it is the smaller passages in the book that make this story more powerful. Rotherham's conversations with the war criminal and his own outcome after the war are key to the novel. In the latter part of the story, German soldier Karsten is brought to despair, not by his army's defeat, but ultimately learning what they had fought for. After he watches postwar newsreels of Belsen prison camp, he says "To be fighting for that. And I was ashamed of surrending."
This is a thoughtful story on many levels. Most importantly, it describes the fact that when nations declare war, individuals are not so simply divided into distinct citizenship nor do they form instantly clear personal truths.
July 25, 2016
There were a lot of things I really liked about this book. There were beautiful lyrical descriptions of life in Wales during the war, with particularly interesting comments on national loyalties. The Welsh girl at the centre of the story was a very interesting character, and everyone in the story was very believable. However I kept waiting for the connection with the story about Hess to become clear and when it did it was really a very slight connection. There were some wonderful little scenes with Hess, one I particularly liked when they went for a drive and met a bull. I think because I kept waiting for the two stories to be intertwined I had the feeling throughout the book that I was reading an introduction to the story and it had not yet got going.
February 22, 2020
This story of a Welsh girl living in a nationalistic part of Wales, when a German POW camp guarded by mostly English guards is set up nearby, on paper sounds pretty interesting - but when I read this book back in 2008, it doesn't look to have overly impressed me. But the idea of the Germans, and guarding them the English, moving in and disrupting a Welsh community, as well as bringing a romantic connection for our Welsh Girl sounds pretty interesting to me, so will have to add to my TBR.
February 7, 2012
The Welsh Girl
Peter Ho Davies
2008
NUTSHELL: Two plots - one plot = enough plot. This one's more of a 5.
Who's the Welsh Girl? That would be Esther Evans, living in Wales in the 1940s. Her sweetheart's off to war and she and her father have an evacuee child. Esther also works as a barmaid in town.
What's her plot?
What a depressing book. It gets worse.
Rats. Yeah. And then there's
I suppose I could read it for the prose. You could, at that. The quality of the writing saved this book. If you're just looking for a story, though... don't bother.
Peter Ho Davies
2008
NUTSHELL: Two plots - one plot = enough plot. This one's more of a 5.
Who's the Welsh Girl? That would be Esther Evans, living in Wales in the 1940s. Her sweetheart's off to war and she and her father have an evacuee child. Esther also works as a barmaid in town.
What's her plot?
What a depressing book. It gets worse.
Rats. Yeah. And then there's
I suppose I could read it for the prose. You could, at that. The quality of the writing saved this book. If you're just looking for a story, though... don't bother.
September 26, 2017
** 1/2
This just didn't wow me and as obsessed as I am with all things Welsh right now, that is disappointing. First, the description of the book here and elsewhere feels like it was written by someone who didn't read the book. Secondly, I found Esther to be mildly irritating and only interested in men. Maybe that would have been handled differently by a female author? Maybe I'm being too critical? And finally, the most compelling part of the story to me actually had little to nothing to do with the main storyline--the two lone chapters about Rotherman and Rudolph Hess. A novel about *that* would have been far more interesting but I'm not entirely sure why two chapters were inserted into this book.
I suspect others will like this one more and I do think this will be a good selection for book groups, especially given the discussion guide at the back. I'll read more from Davies (later) but wanted this book to be something it wasn't.
This just didn't wow me and as obsessed as I am with all things Welsh right now, that is disappointing. First, the description of the book here and elsewhere feels like it was written by someone who didn't read the book. Secondly, I found Esther to be mildly irritating and only interested in men. Maybe that would have been handled differently by a female author? Maybe I'm being too critical? And finally, the most compelling part of the story to me actually had little to nothing to do with the main storyline--the two lone chapters about Rotherman and Rudolph Hess. A novel about *that* would have been far more interesting but I'm not entirely sure why two chapters were inserted into this book.
I suspect others will like this one more and I do think this will be a good selection for book groups, especially given the discussion guide at the back. I'll read more from Davies (later) but wanted this book to be something it wasn't.
May 8, 2012
The Welsh Girl has been following me around. Even before I finished the book, I found myself thinking about it in the same way a tune runs unbidden through your brain. I’m still fascinated by the meaning of the title of this piece, but I’m not going to explain it here. You’ll have to read the book to get it.
It’s said that there are often writers who are novelists, others who are short story writers, and that the crossover can be difficult. It’s also said that Raymond Carver tried all his career to write a novel and couldn’t do it. Peter Ho Davies, a celebrated author of short stories for whom this is his first novel, doesn’t have that problem.
A friend of mine has been highly infatuated with Davies ever since she met him in a workshop a few years ago. I’ve admired him as one of the better short story writers around, but never been enthralled. That’s changed.
I believe Davies’ long stint in a medium where every second counts contributed to the excellence of The Wesh Girl. Nothing is wasted. Not a character, not a description, not a rumination. And it adds up to a beautiful whole.
The Welsh girl in question is Esther Evans, a seventeen-year-old who feels stuck in her village but feels destined for a wider future. Others see her as a potential globetrotter, too. But there’s this war thing. The action begins just before D-Day, and in short order, the world comes to her before she has a chance to leave. First there’s an English adolescent evacuee (two, actually), then an English sapper, then a bunch of German POW’s, then a German Jew sent to interrogate the POW’s. There’s also collection of other characters who never would have come near the village but for the war. Esther’s yen for the exotic gets her in trouble even before the English army infests the countryside, and the complications get even more complicated afterwards.
Though this is unquestionably Esther’s book, she shares main billing with two other primary characters--one of the POW’s and the aforementioned German Jew. Each of them, interestingly enough, has lost a parent. Each of them has a question of honor to settle. Each of them has at least one identity problem to deal with. Such dilemmas are shared by various of the less major characters as well. Putting the layers on the onion, the individual crises are reflected by questions of German, Welsh, English, and Jewish nationalism and cultural identity. (You didn’t know about Welsh nationalism? I didn’t much either till I visited a few years back. I can attest to the continuing truth of the hostilities reflected in the book.) We even get to spend some time with Rudolf Hess, and the conversations with him provide both a psychological and an historical dimension that is not only interesting in itself but informs--even transforms--the thematic and dramatic texture of the novel. (In fact, the interrogation scenes, especially those with Hess, carry such a load of philosophical and historical material so suggestive and challenging of thought and feeling that they bear a good deal of thought and discussion in and of themselves.) Thus does Davies masterfully mold macrocosmic chaos into a comprehensible artistic whole.
We sometimes see the same events through different eyes. Sometimes we see one part of a story sequence through one pov, then the next part through another. One character leaves the book for over two hundred pages. I was anxious about where he was, relieved to see him return. Thus, not only is the action itself suspenseful, but the very structure of the book creates its own suspense in somewhat the same way a mountain creates its own weather.
Davies spends a great deal of time in the minds of his characters, but every moment moves the story. One of the complaints I have about novelists such as Ian McEwen and Richard Ford, is that they sometimes get self-indulgent about their characters’ pondering and wander around through their thoughts, feelings, and recollections to the extent that the books lose dramatic tension. Not so with The Welsh Girl. There’s always something that’s happening, has just happened, is about to happen, or seems about to happen, which is sometimes just as good.
My only general quibble, aside from a couple of specifics that I can’t discuss without spoiling the first-time reader’s experience, is that Davies’ characters too often have attacks of delayed intelligence. They go through a scene, then later in their thoughts attach meaning to the events or to their response to the events so that the author can rather too obviously insert his comments on the situation. It’s minor, but a little annoying, rather like Cormac McCarthy’s habit of introducing his similes with “like some [atavistic mammal, e.g.].” I set aside a few passages to quote for examples, but they all give up too much plot for the initiate, so I hope I’ve been clear enough about what I mean. If not, well, again, you’ll have to read it yourself.
The Welsh Girl is on one level a solid wartime romance. Nothing experimental or groundbreaking about its structure or language. However, its historical, mythical, and personal layers are so closely woven, so lend meaning one to the other just as different-colored threads add dimension to a fabric, that it had me looking for symbols that weren’t there. I kept wanting Esther to somehow echo the tale of the biblical queen, a secret Jew, who saves her people. However, the parallel simply isn’t there. I’m satisfied, though, with the more mundane idea of a connection with the movie/swimming star Esther Williams, who represents that wide, romantic world that Esther aspires to. There’s still plenty of resonance in the Shakespearean allusions (and other literary and historical references I doubtless missed) to lend the novel a glow of meaning far beyond the excellent surface tale.
This is my second WWII POW novel in as many months. Maybe the debut of Ken Burns’ latest is having a sub rosa impact on my reading life. I understand The Welsh Girl was on the long short list for this year’s Booker prize, but didn’t make the short-short list. I’ll be interested to see what beats it. I certainly consider it better than anything I’ve read by the noted Booker celebrity Ishiguro. Maybe I should get on that committee.
At any rate, I’m thankful to Davies for writing the book and to my friend for putting me on to Davies. One of this--or any--year’s top reads.
It’s said that there are often writers who are novelists, others who are short story writers, and that the crossover can be difficult. It’s also said that Raymond Carver tried all his career to write a novel and couldn’t do it. Peter Ho Davies, a celebrated author of short stories for whom this is his first novel, doesn’t have that problem.
A friend of mine has been highly infatuated with Davies ever since she met him in a workshop a few years ago. I’ve admired him as one of the better short story writers around, but never been enthralled. That’s changed.
I believe Davies’ long stint in a medium where every second counts contributed to the excellence of The Wesh Girl. Nothing is wasted. Not a character, not a description, not a rumination. And it adds up to a beautiful whole.
The Welsh girl in question is Esther Evans, a seventeen-year-old who feels stuck in her village but feels destined for a wider future. Others see her as a potential globetrotter, too. But there’s this war thing. The action begins just before D-Day, and in short order, the world comes to her before she has a chance to leave. First there’s an English adolescent evacuee (two, actually), then an English sapper, then a bunch of German POW’s, then a German Jew sent to interrogate the POW’s. There’s also collection of other characters who never would have come near the village but for the war. Esther’s yen for the exotic gets her in trouble even before the English army infests the countryside, and the complications get even more complicated afterwards.
Though this is unquestionably Esther’s book, she shares main billing with two other primary characters--one of the POW’s and the aforementioned German Jew. Each of them, interestingly enough, has lost a parent. Each of them has a question of honor to settle. Each of them has at least one identity problem to deal with. Such dilemmas are shared by various of the less major characters as well. Putting the layers on the onion, the individual crises are reflected by questions of German, Welsh, English, and Jewish nationalism and cultural identity. (You didn’t know about Welsh nationalism? I didn’t much either till I visited a few years back. I can attest to the continuing truth of the hostilities reflected in the book.) We even get to spend some time with Rudolf Hess, and the conversations with him provide both a psychological and an historical dimension that is not only interesting in itself but informs--even transforms--the thematic and dramatic texture of the novel. (In fact, the interrogation scenes, especially those with Hess, carry such a load of philosophical and historical material so suggestive and challenging of thought and feeling that they bear a good deal of thought and discussion in and of themselves.) Thus does Davies masterfully mold macrocosmic chaos into a comprehensible artistic whole.
We sometimes see the same events through different eyes. Sometimes we see one part of a story sequence through one pov, then the next part through another. One character leaves the book for over two hundred pages. I was anxious about where he was, relieved to see him return. Thus, not only is the action itself suspenseful, but the very structure of the book creates its own suspense in somewhat the same way a mountain creates its own weather.
Davies spends a great deal of time in the minds of his characters, but every moment moves the story. One of the complaints I have about novelists such as Ian McEwen and Richard Ford, is that they sometimes get self-indulgent about their characters’ pondering and wander around through their thoughts, feelings, and recollections to the extent that the books lose dramatic tension. Not so with The Welsh Girl. There’s always something that’s happening, has just happened, is about to happen, or seems about to happen, which is sometimes just as good.
My only general quibble, aside from a couple of specifics that I can’t discuss without spoiling the first-time reader’s experience, is that Davies’ characters too often have attacks of delayed intelligence. They go through a scene, then later in their thoughts attach meaning to the events or to their response to the events so that the author can rather too obviously insert his comments on the situation. It’s minor, but a little annoying, rather like Cormac McCarthy’s habit of introducing his similes with “like some [atavistic mammal, e.g.].” I set aside a few passages to quote for examples, but they all give up too much plot for the initiate, so I hope I’ve been clear enough about what I mean. If not, well, again, you’ll have to read it yourself.
The Welsh Girl is on one level a solid wartime romance. Nothing experimental or groundbreaking about its structure or language. However, its historical, mythical, and personal layers are so closely woven, so lend meaning one to the other just as different-colored threads add dimension to a fabric, that it had me looking for symbols that weren’t there. I kept wanting Esther to somehow echo the tale of the biblical queen, a secret Jew, who saves her people. However, the parallel simply isn’t there. I’m satisfied, though, with the more mundane idea of a connection with the movie/swimming star Esther Williams, who represents that wide, romantic world that Esther aspires to. There’s still plenty of resonance in the Shakespearean allusions (and other literary and historical references I doubtless missed) to lend the novel a glow of meaning far beyond the excellent surface tale.
This is my second WWII POW novel in as many months. Maybe the debut of Ken Burns’ latest is having a sub rosa impact on my reading life. I understand The Welsh Girl was on the long short list for this year’s Booker prize, but didn’t make the short-short list. I’ll be interested to see what beats it. I certainly consider it better than anything I’ve read by the noted Booker celebrity Ishiguro. Maybe I should get on that committee.
At any rate, I’m thankful to Davies for writing the book and to my friend for putting me on to Davies. One of this--or any--year’s top reads.
June 24, 2024
Peter Ho Davies is an exceptionally talented writer. He has an incredible gift for convincingly inhabiting his characters, whether male or female. Authors do not always write the opposite sex well. Examples abound from the more popular romantic genre, most often written by women, who portray most men with laughable inaccuracy, to more serious literature, where authors I love, such as Dickens, have female characters that are two-dimensional at best. But Davies had me invested in The Welsh Girl, his characters filled with a nuance and consistency paired with growth that I rarely come across.
He also decided on a more complex structure that he handled beautifully. It was not obvious at first, but by the end, his skill was on full display making this, in my opinion, one of the finer examples of historical fiction.
He also decided on a more complex structure that he handled beautifully. It was not obvious at first, but by the end, his skill was on full display making this, in my opinion, one of the finer examples of historical fiction.
April 17, 2019
Got to admit I love this book. I heard him read from it while it was in construction, so was ready to be bitten when it was finished. I'm a sucker for historical fiction, and this did not disappoint. Here's a thing I wrote a dozen years ago
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
February 22, 2025
Debut novel, set in Wales at the end of WWII. Beautifully evocative sentences and use of language. Made me want to travel there.
June 26, 2007
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
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
October 20, 2017
It's quite interesting to read The Welsh Girl a couple of months after reading The Fortunes, a book that Davies wrote almost ten years later. It's clear that the same big themes have motivated him for a long time.
One of the things that I felt most strongly here was that, no matter how downtrodden one might feel, one can always find someone else to feel superior to. The Welsh who hate the British. The children of the striking miners (forty years earlier) who still won't have anything to do with the children of the scabs, drinking across town in a different tavern. The Welsh and British both hate the Germans, of course, but even in the POW camp, the German submariners feel themselves superior to the infantry, and the man who escapes is suspected of having been an Allied sympathizer upon his recapture. In town, the local kids make fun of the war orphans who've come to work the farms, those educated in English schools look down upon those whose only language is Welsh. The Jews are nearly as ill-regarded by the Allies as by the Germans. And always, any man can look down upon any woman at any time.
There's such radical suspicion at every turn, the fear that the others will take advantage of us, will sell us out, will be disloyal. And of course, because of that fear, we preemptively sell them out before they can put the knife into us, furthering the mistrust for months and years and generations to come. Is the whole world nothing but Hatfields and McCoys? It sometimes seems...
The book is claustrophobic with secrets and rationalizations. The Jew who claims he isn't really a Jew because his father was Jewish, not his mother, and Jewish identity is matrilineal. The pregnant girl, raped by a departing English soldier, who decides to claim that the father was a departed (and likely killed) local Welsh soldier so that her child will hold family and community together. No one can be open about who they are, what they desire. Truth is more dangerous than lies, so lies abound.
The plots are engaging, and multiple, intertwining when least expected. But this isn't a book about plot, or character, as much as it is about cultures and what happens when cultures are forced to share place. It's a deeply discouraging book in many ways, at least in part because it mirrors so closely the fear and suspicion and clannishness that we're currently living through. Davies has gotten that dynamic dead right, both in this book about Wales in the 1940s or his decade-later book about Asian Americans in 1870/1930/1980/2010. There's beauty to be had in his descriptions of despair, but the despair is vast.
One of the things that I felt most strongly here was that, no matter how downtrodden one might feel, one can always find someone else to feel superior to. The Welsh who hate the British. The children of the striking miners (forty years earlier) who still won't have anything to do with the children of the scabs, drinking across town in a different tavern. The Welsh and British both hate the Germans, of course, but even in the POW camp, the German submariners feel themselves superior to the infantry, and the man who escapes is suspected of having been an Allied sympathizer upon his recapture. In town, the local kids make fun of the war orphans who've come to work the farms, those educated in English schools look down upon those whose only language is Welsh. The Jews are nearly as ill-regarded by the Allies as by the Germans. And always, any man can look down upon any woman at any time.
There's such radical suspicion at every turn, the fear that the others will take advantage of us, will sell us out, will be disloyal. And of course, because of that fear, we preemptively sell them out before they can put the knife into us, furthering the mistrust for months and years and generations to come. Is the whole world nothing but Hatfields and McCoys? It sometimes seems...
The book is claustrophobic with secrets and rationalizations. The Jew who claims he isn't really a Jew because his father was Jewish, not his mother, and Jewish identity is matrilineal. The pregnant girl, raped by a departing English soldier, who decides to claim that the father was a departed (and likely killed) local Welsh soldier so that her child will hold family and community together. No one can be open about who they are, what they desire. Truth is more dangerous than lies, so lies abound.
The plots are engaging, and multiple, intertwining when least expected. But this isn't a book about plot, or character, as much as it is about cultures and what happens when cultures are forced to share place. It's a deeply discouraging book in many ways, at least in part because it mirrors so closely the fear and suspicion and clannishness that we're currently living through. Davies has gotten that dynamic dead right, both in this book about Wales in the 1940s or his decade-later book about Asian Americans in 1870/1930/1980/2010. There's beauty to be had in his descriptions of despair, but the despair is vast.
April 1, 2017
The theme of the book is quite clearly identity and belonging: the sheep’s sense of territory passed through the females of the flock is contrasted and compared to the Welsh “Land of my Fathers”, German “Fatherland”, Jewishness – which is passed through the maternal line as far as the Jews are concerned but either parent according to the Nazis, and this theme comes in almost constantly in different ways. Although well enough written (and with the theme if overlaboured and obvious at least lending it some depth), the book is disappointingly underwhelming and the Hess storyline unconvincing and unnecessary.
March 4, 2008
Well-written, cinematically rendered WWII novel of interwoven stories of a 17-year-old Welsh barmaid and daughter of a sheep rancher, a German POW who surrendered, and a British interrogator who is a German Jew. Very interesting exploration of cowardice, pride, dislocation, and nationalism with well fleshed-out characters and vivid scenes.
July 14, 2017
Good, though I saw little point to the Hess/Rotheram storyline.
September 13, 2022
The Welsh Girl is set in northern Wales, and the most important of three principal characters is a 17-year-old local girl, Esther Evans. However, an alternate definition of the word welsh provided up front (and reinforced in later dialogue) indicates a double-entendre is intended.
And while on the topic of word-play I want to mention that, for me, this quite good story is somewhat marred by the insertion of two or three passages in which the author waxes poetic in a creative-writing-class sort of way. I don't believe these embellishments are characteristic of any one character's way of seeing things; they're just narrative frills, and as such are distracting.
Aside from that, the writing in general is quite good, and the occasional well-placed figure of speech is appreciated (e.g., "Still nothing, except Rotheram's own pulse, like a wingbeat in his ears"). When summary is appropriate, say, to fill in backstory, the telling is smooth and not too obtrusive.
The book's opening sequence centers around a German émigré named Rotheram. It's 1944. He'd escaped to England in the late 30s, and was lucky to do so as the Nazis had considered him a Jew. (In his view, he isn't.) He now works as a translator in the intelligence division of the British government, and has been sent to interview Rudolph Hess, the former Nazi, who's being held at a house in the Welsh countryside. He finds the former deputy führer an elderly and enigmatic figure—perhaps crafty but also perhaps mentally gone.
Then the focus shifts to a pub where young Esther is drawing pints of ale, both for the fiercely nationalistic—i.e., Welsh, not English—men she's known all her life and for English-speaking workers brought in to build a mysterious installation adjoining her father's sheep farm. The news of the day is exciting: D-day has just occurred. Allied forces are now advancing into the Continent and the Germans are finally retreating.
The focus remains on Esther, and her uneasy relationship with her gruff old father, her reluctance to commit to a certain young man who has now enlisted in the war effort, her motherly attitude toward a succession of young boys evacuated from London to stay in the safety of the countryside, and—most significantly—what happens when she "steps out" with one of those English laborers.
Another important narrative thread involves Karsten, a German soldier captured at Normandy and sent along with other POWs to stay in the newly prepared encampment in Esther's village.
That's the basic situation.
Then there are certain recurring themes. One has to do with the idea of an essence that's supposedly passed down through the generations via the mother. For example, Rotheram doesn't consider himself Jewish because, even though his father was Jewish, his mother was not, and the Jewish line runs through the mother. Rotheram's mother was Canadian, and thus English is his "mother tongue" and the avenue by which he found his present job. A similar principle shows up in Esther's father's explanation for how their sheep know which patch of land is home. He believes they have an inherited cynefin, a sense of place. And since the male lambs are always sold for meat, this sense could only come from mother to daughter.
In this context it's significant that Esther no longer has a mother. Karsten's mother is still alive, but the one letter he has received from her since his capture does not convey warmth. There's an implication that the Fatherland would have been better served if he'd died in its defense. If mothers convey a beneficial quality, it's denied to both Esther and Karsten.
Another idea percolating below the surface of the narrative is the relationship between actors and audience. Rotheram has a movie reel showing a prewar Nazi pageant. He remembers watching it in Germany, and sensing that "the fervent masses on the screen seemed to merge with the crowd around him" in a way he found terrifying. However, Hess tells him "A film like that does something more important than stir the few. ... It makes the rest an audience. Passive, you see? You watch a film, you sit in a cinema, you see things, you feel things, but you do nothing. ... That's the power of film, to draw a line between those who act and those who watch."
The book conveys a sense that there are many such themes one could unpack. Most important I think is the way the characters worry over questions of honor, the implications of taking the easy way out (welching), and ambiguity as to which course that might be. Rotheram, for example, feels conflicted for having fled Germany, even though staying would have meant death. In battle, Karsten actually feels a flicker of envy for those who're killed. After the war, Hess has the option of maintaining his presumed mental incompetence but chooses instead to be prosecuted at Nuremberg. Esther has to make a big choice of her own, but I've said enough.
I believe this novel could be profitably be read a second time.
And while on the topic of word-play I want to mention that, for me, this quite good story is somewhat marred by the insertion of two or three passages in which the author waxes poetic in a creative-writing-class sort of way. I don't believe these embellishments are characteristic of any one character's way of seeing things; they're just narrative frills, and as such are distracting.
Aside from that, the writing in general is quite good, and the occasional well-placed figure of speech is appreciated (e.g., "Still nothing, except Rotheram's own pulse, like a wingbeat in his ears"). When summary is appropriate, say, to fill in backstory, the telling is smooth and not too obtrusive.
The book's opening sequence centers around a German émigré named Rotheram. It's 1944. He'd escaped to England in the late 30s, and was lucky to do so as the Nazis had considered him a Jew. (In his view, he isn't.) He now works as a translator in the intelligence division of the British government, and has been sent to interview Rudolph Hess, the former Nazi, who's being held at a house in the Welsh countryside. He finds the former deputy führer an elderly and enigmatic figure—perhaps crafty but also perhaps mentally gone.
Then the focus shifts to a pub where young Esther is drawing pints of ale, both for the fiercely nationalistic—i.e., Welsh, not English—men she's known all her life and for English-speaking workers brought in to build a mysterious installation adjoining her father's sheep farm. The news of the day is exciting: D-day has just occurred. Allied forces are now advancing into the Continent and the Germans are finally retreating.
The focus remains on Esther, and her uneasy relationship with her gruff old father, her reluctance to commit to a certain young man who has now enlisted in the war effort, her motherly attitude toward a succession of young boys evacuated from London to stay in the safety of the countryside, and—most significantly—what happens when she "steps out" with one of those English laborers.
Another important narrative thread involves Karsten, a German soldier captured at Normandy and sent along with other POWs to stay in the newly prepared encampment in Esther's village.
That's the basic situation.
Then there are certain recurring themes. One has to do with the idea of an essence that's supposedly passed down through the generations via the mother. For example, Rotheram doesn't consider himself Jewish because, even though his father was Jewish, his mother was not, and the Jewish line runs through the mother. Rotheram's mother was Canadian, and thus English is his "mother tongue" and the avenue by which he found his present job. A similar principle shows up in Esther's father's explanation for how their sheep know which patch of land is home. He believes they have an inherited cynefin, a sense of place. And since the male lambs are always sold for meat, this sense could only come from mother to daughter.
In this context it's significant that Esther no longer has a mother. Karsten's mother is still alive, but the one letter he has received from her since his capture does not convey warmth. There's an implication that the Fatherland would have been better served if he'd died in its defense. If mothers convey a beneficial quality, it's denied to both Esther and Karsten.
Another idea percolating below the surface of the narrative is the relationship between actors and audience. Rotheram has a movie reel showing a prewar Nazi pageant. He remembers watching it in Germany, and sensing that "the fervent masses on the screen seemed to merge with the crowd around him" in a way he found terrifying. However, Hess tells him "A film like that does something more important than stir the few. ... It makes the rest an audience. Passive, you see? You watch a film, you sit in a cinema, you see things, you feel things, but you do nothing. ... That's the power of film, to draw a line between those who act and those who watch."
The book conveys a sense that there are many such themes one could unpack. Most important I think is the way the characters worry over questions of honor, the implications of taking the easy way out (welching), and ambiguity as to which course that might be. Rotheram, for example, feels conflicted for having fled Germany, even though staying would have meant death. In battle, Karsten actually feels a flicker of envy for those who're killed. After the war, Hess has the option of maintaining his presumed mental incompetence but chooses instead to be prosecuted at Nuremberg. Esther has to make a big choice of her own, but I've said enough.
I believe this novel could be profitably be read a second time.
May 5, 2021
I have had this book on the shelf for quite some time and am happy that I finally got around to it. The setting is World War II, and the titular Welsh girl is Esther, 17-year old daughter of a sheep farmer. In addition to helping her widowed father with the farm, Esther works as a waitress/barmaid at the local pub. This is where she meets a British soldier named Colin, one of a crew setting up a POW camp on land adjacent to her father's property.
Esther and her father have taken in several boys whose city parents wanted them transported to a safer place. The current boy, Jim, is having trouble fitting in with the locals. He resents being sent away by his mother, and resents Esther for turning down a proposal from a neighbor lad, Rhys, who had befriended him. Disappointed, Rhys, signs up with the British army, and Jim blames Esther for this, too. He joins a gang of kids who hide in the trees and harass the German prisoners.
The other main figure in the story is a young German POW named Karsten. Present at the Normandy invasion, he forced the men under his command to surrender one it was clear that resistance would be hopeless. Some of the men are angry about this decision--and let him know it. Karsten is one of the few prisoners who can speak English, and he tries to befriend Jim. He's also curious about the young woman who comes to fetch Jim every evening in an effort to keep him out of trouble.
To tell you more would be to tell you too much. Needless to say, these characters' paths cross in unexpected ways. Davies creates a realistic window into the effects of the war on a small Welsh town and its inhabitants. I found the ending a bit unexpected, but it worked. overall, a very good novel.
Esther and her father have taken in several boys whose city parents wanted them transported to a safer place. The current boy, Jim, is having trouble fitting in with the locals. He resents being sent away by his mother, and resents Esther for turning down a proposal from a neighbor lad, Rhys, who had befriended him. Disappointed, Rhys, signs up with the British army, and Jim blames Esther for this, too. He joins a gang of kids who hide in the trees and harass the German prisoners.
The other main figure in the story is a young German POW named Karsten. Present at the Normandy invasion, he forced the men under his command to surrender one it was clear that resistance would be hopeless. Some of the men are angry about this decision--and let him know it. Karsten is one of the few prisoners who can speak English, and he tries to befriend Jim. He's also curious about the young woman who comes to fetch Jim every evening in an effort to keep him out of trouble.
To tell you more would be to tell you too much. Needless to say, these characters' paths cross in unexpected ways. Davies creates a realistic window into the effects of the war on a small Welsh town and its inhabitants. I found the ending a bit unexpected, but it worked. overall, a very good novel.
May 14, 2019
I have read quite a bit of WW2 fiction and I have NOT gotten a more real sense of the humanity of German POW's before this book. ( I tend to view the enemy as one dimensional :( and this challenged my perspective! (Growth happened!!)
One other aspect of this book that I enjoyed was the barrage of new information I was introduced to: sheep farming, the Welsh history and geography, POW's, a man's point of view.
This book follows three characters stories, in a linear fashion, two of which converge. Two of those plots revolve around German prisoners of war. Written by a man, I got a vivid, clear picture of what it meant to be a man and soldier under these conditions: inadequate in honor and duty, the fragility of ego, the restlessness and desire to compete and win, etc. I truly appreciate this because I am not a man and that is not something I readily comprehend.
The other plot was all about the "welsh girl" for which the title is named. I liked her because she wasn't weak. I didn't think the author did a fabulous job of conveying her feelings or giving a realistic personality to her, but then again...it's a man writing her, so I can't blame him. He writes men greatly!
I probably wouldn't read this again or recommend as captivating WW2 fiction. But if you're keen on learning a bit about Wales or want to get into the mind of a surrendered, German POW, go for it!
One other aspect of this book that I enjoyed was the barrage of new information I was introduced to: sheep farming, the Welsh history and geography, POW's, a man's point of view.
This book follows three characters stories, in a linear fashion, two of which converge. Two of those plots revolve around German prisoners of war. Written by a man, I got a vivid, clear picture of what it meant to be a man and soldier under these conditions: inadequate in honor and duty, the fragility of ego, the restlessness and desire to compete and win, etc. I truly appreciate this because I am not a man and that is not something I readily comprehend.
The other plot was all about the "welsh girl" for which the title is named. I liked her because she wasn't weak. I didn't think the author did a fabulous job of conveying her feelings or giving a realistic personality to her, but then again...it's a man writing her, so I can't blame him. He writes men greatly!
I probably wouldn't read this again or recommend as captivating WW2 fiction. But if you're keen on learning a bit about Wales or want to get into the mind of a surrendered, German POW, go for it!
February 10, 2024
Unfortunately this is a case of a talented writer with no ability to write a plot. The prose itself is beautiful, and the characters (with the exception of the female lead, Esther) are compelling. But there is no plot. There are loose scenes that sometimes run into each other but never go anywhere. There is a subplot about Rudolf Hess that has absolutely no bearing on anything else. Oh, and there's functionally no ending.
Sad to see the good elements (the prose, the pastoral Welsh setting, Karstan's characterization) wasted in this book.
Sad to see the good elements (the prose, the pastoral Welsh setting, Karstan's characterization) wasted in this book.
May 14, 2019
Please do not take my incredibly slow reading of this book as a comment on its readability. It is an excellent story from start to finish, one I have never quite heard before, told in a way I haven't quite seen before. I love how the style of it feels almost like a memory, like someone sitting beside you and telling it during one of those late-night conversations that feels endless in the best way. The characters all had such interesting layers to them, and the story did not go in directions I expected. Just a fantastic read overall!
April 16, 2020
Any book about the World War invariably grabs my attention and the blurb on the back cover of 'The Welsh Girl' was enough to entice me into reading the book. Intersecting lives, the months before the war formally ended, broken lives, ravaged cities-the stories were begging to be narrated.
Half way into the book I had an inkling of where it was headed, there was a sense of predictability (but that doesn't hinder the read in any way). As I delved through the lonesome Welsh hills, listening to the banter at the village pub, immersing myself in the vast patches of grassland, I was privy to the conversations, the emotions, the losses of war, and that war has no winners, there are only losers, either you lose your land, or your pride or your conscience. A sense of belonging, 'cynefin' as the Welsh call it predominates the story. Where does one truly belong-the land that borne us or a land unknown to us, a mythical land that the restless mind and heart keep seeking!
The third intersecting life, however, were half-baked, for there was a potential, an edge which I left were not utilised in the book; it just skirted around the main story. And the end seemed rushed, and hurried, or perhaps I felt so because the build up was rambling and so zealously engaging.
Definitely not a very regular war story, if that is what one seeks, but one that should not be missed.
Half way into the book I had an inkling of where it was headed, there was a sense of predictability (but that doesn't hinder the read in any way). As I delved through the lonesome Welsh hills, listening to the banter at the village pub, immersing myself in the vast patches of grassland, I was privy to the conversations, the emotions, the losses of war, and that war has no winners, there are only losers, either you lose your land, or your pride or your conscience. A sense of belonging, 'cynefin' as the Welsh call it predominates the story. Where does one truly belong-the land that borne us or a land unknown to us, a mythical land that the restless mind and heart keep seeking!
The third intersecting life, however, were half-baked, for there was a potential, an edge which I left were not utilised in the book; it just skirted around the main story. And the end seemed rushed, and hurried, or perhaps I felt so because the build up was rambling and so zealously engaging.
Definitely not a very regular war story, if that is what one seeks, but one that should not be missed.
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