Resistance: A Novel [DECKLE EDGE] (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: auxiliary units, sacking cloth, lambing ewes, Owen Sheers, The Court, Upper Blaen (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Poet Sheers takes readers to a small Welsh village during a speculative WWII—featuring a German invasion of Britain—in his auspicious debut novel. It's 1944 and Sarah Lewis and the women in Ochlon valley are left alone after all the local men disappear one night. The women's worlds suddenly shrink to the day-to-day struggles to keep their sheep farms going until the war comes to their doorsteps in the form of Capt. Albrecht Wolfram and his men, who have a murky mission to carry out in the valley. Promising to leave the women alone, the Germans occupy an abandoned house and the two camps keep mostly to themselves until a harsh winter takes hold, and it becomes clear that the locals and the Germans will have to depend on one another to survive. It's also revealed that Albrecht is just as interested as the locals are in staying away from the war for as long as possible, and the two communities begin to merge. But when the weather breaks and the valley reopens to the world—and hence the war—the peculiar idyll threatens to shatter. Sheers's alternate reality is frighteningly convincing and dripping with heartbreak. This is an outstanding debut.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

The D-Day landings have failed, and Russia has fallen. Within a short time, half of Britain is occupied by Germans. Churchill and members of his Cabinet follow King George to Canada.

This is what we discover in the gripping pages of Resistance, a first novel by Welsh writer Owen Sheers. He bases this daring alternate history on the existence of very real resistance pockets that were part of a little known force-in-waiting during World War II. The Auxiliary Units Special Duties Section was part of a larger British Resistance Organisation, which was made up of farmers and local townspeople, largely men, who intimately knew the terrain. Recruited and trained to spy on an occupying force, their job was to go to ground, if necessary (in stocked bunkers with hidden entrances and escape exits), to run messages, to create confusion, havoc and destruction amid a possible German invading force. The details of this largely unknown history have been coming to light in recent years as documentaries, private papers and museums have begun to reveal an elaborate scheme that was never put into action.

Resistance takes place in the remote and beautiful Olchon Valley in Wales. Sarah Lewis, age 26, wakes one morning to find that her husband is gone. As it turns out, each of a handful of women in this rugged farming community finds herself alone. The disappearance of their men is followed by the arrival of a German patrol, under the leadership of Albrecht Wolfram, a young captain who had been a visiting student at Oxford prior to the war. What follows is an uneasy and fragile relationship between six soldiers and the Welsh farm women, all of whom are isolated during the long, snowbound winter.

The major accomplishment of this novel is that Sheers never lets his considerable research distract from the focus of his story. He also has a subtle and rather beautiful understanding of emotional nuance, and this plays out among his characters, especially Sarah and Albrecht. It's a seductive story, made all the more appealing because it is so credibly set in circumstances that might have been. The reader ends up caring for everyone -- Welsh or German or English. To gain empathy for a large cast of characters, all of whom line up on opposing sides of the war, is no small feat. These vulnerable men and women, indeed, become the faces of war.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese (February 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038552210X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385522106
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #546,072 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and very accomplished debut novel, March 11, 2008

By	S. Barnes (UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an extremely powerful story set in the imagined backdrop of an invaded and Nazi-occupied Britain, from 1944 onwards... an alternative outcome for the Second World War which could quite conceivably have come true. After failed D-Day landings the German invasion begins in earnest on British soil and this story unfolds as the country gradually becomes another occupied territory of the Third Reich - herein lies its power and horror.

One morning, in one of the most remote valleys in the Black Mountains on the English-Welsh border, twenty-six-year-old Sarah Lewis awakes unusually late in the day to find her husband has disappeared. Suspicions are confirmed as all the women in the valley meet to find that all seven men in the valley have literally vanished overnight. The women fear that their husbands have joined an underground resistance group... and they are left to tend their farms, taking on the full heavy workload previously undertaken by the men.

Fear and mistrust envelops them when a German patrol arrives in the valley on an important mission, until an uneasy truce is formed from a mutual need for help during the harsh frozen winter months in this isolated valley of the Black Mountains. The men in the patrol are war-weary and glad of their respite from the fighting; the women are struggling with their workloads.... both sides have a tendency to forget that there is a war on, and this could be a very dangerous thing to forget indeed.

Owen Sheers (also poet) writes in a beautifully lyrical way, vividly bringing to life the Olchon valley. The power of the novel lies in its ability to shock, as the slow realisation gradually dawns that this outcome could have been the one to come true... An idea that stays with you long after turning the last page. I did hestiate before giving it 5 stars because I didn't find it quite as compelling a read in the first half, as in the second; the pace was slightly lacking. However, what it loses in pace it really does make up for in prose and description.

A good read for anyone. I'd especially recommend it for young students of the Second World War, if only to see the Nazi occupation of other European countries in a different light, and perhaps even bring their history more vividly alive.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A listless read, April 30, 2008

By	DL Simmons (New York) - See all my reviews

I am somewhat baffled by all the positive reviews as I found the praise heaped upon this book somewhat unjustified. To me, it is an incomplete work at best. It's obvious from the writing style that the author is a poet, but like poetry it doesn't always have a destination. The book meanders lyrically, but lacks any real character development beyond Sarah and the plotting is almost non-existent. I found myself wanting to know more about the other characters who seemed to disappear from the book. There were times I wished the author would get on with it. And when I did come to the end, I was disappointed to find that there was no there there, and by that time, I didn't care.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good idea, good setting, but slow at times, March 11, 2008

By	David W. Straight (knoxville, tennessee United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a promising debut novel. It starts with the assumption that the invasion of Normandy failed and that the Germans invaded England. This idea has been done before, but here, rather than a lurid Red Dawn approach, the setting is an isolated valley in Wales. Overnight, all the men of the village (all 7, as I recall) disappear one night, presumably to join a resistance movement, and leaving the women to cope for themselves. The women, who were not informed of the plan by the menfolk, adjust in a variety of ways.

If things had been left at that level, we could have a mostly quiet tale of deeply rural life in Occupied England. But the author also weaves in the story of George, a young man who is recruited for the resistance at the time of the first invasion threat in 1941. Then a German patrol led by Albrecht Wolfram enters the valley on an undisclosed mission. So the story becomes primarily that of the women and the Germans, with perhaps about 10% devoted to George and his leader. Eventually, the reason for the patrol is made clear, but in retrospect the reason seems a little far-fetched: I would have much preferred something simpler, more believable.

The author explains (through Wolfram) why the Normandy invasion failed. I don't think that there was any need to do this: the explanation comes at a time when you've either accepted the basic premise, in which case you don't need an explanation, or else you don't buy the idea, and the explanation doesn't help. Moreover, if you want to look at technical details, the Germans in 1944 lacked the means to carry out an invasion (which also requires huge logistical planning), so that whole aspect should have been left to the imagination and not explained. I am also not comfortable with the mindset that lets the Germans stay in the village rather than rejoining their unit. If Wolfram planned to remain in the village from the start, he certainly picked the right men for the patrol. But there isn't any indication that this was the plan, and in that case I would expect one or more of the Germans to try to return to their regiment rather than stay in the village. So there are some things here which do not feel quite right. But still--it's a quiet story, and the blood and gore of war is mostly remote. I suspect that most authors might try to sex things up--more heroic fighting and sacrifice. But the alternative here works very satisfactorily.