The Welsh Girl (Paperback)

by Peter Ho Davies (Author)
Key Phrases: shore defenses, Bertie Prosser, Heil Hitler, Great War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (January 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618918523
• ISBN-13: 978-0618918522
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #152,553 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Empathy Without Borders, August 20, 2007

By	Jill I. Shtulman (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Welsh Girl (Hardcover)

This gem of a novel is not designed for those who prefer action books with linear plots; it's as real as life itself. From the start, I believed in these characters -- Esther, the Welsh girl...Karstan, the German POW...Jim, the young English boy.

The Welsh Girl can be read in so many different ways: as a story of connections that span boundaries and defy expectations. Or it can be read as a novel of identity. Peter Ho Davies write: "We have something in common, you and I. The same dilemma. Are we who we think we are, or who others judge us to be? A question of will, perhaps."

By the end of the novel, each character will wrestle with this question. The POW will learn the true meaning of "to surrender." The young English boy will find out what "courage" is all about. And the Welsh girl, at the center, will discover about cynefin -- a Welsh quality that has no English translation, but loosely translates to the flock knowing its place. And each will define himself or herself further by comparison with a presumed dead Welsh soldier, whose identity seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

I was enchanted by this novel, the first by the author of Equal Love, a fine short story collection. I'd recommend it wholeheartedly for true readers who are fascinated with love, family, loyalty, and national identity.

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars luminous, May 25, 2007

By	reader (michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Welsh Girl (Hardcover)

One of the greatest accomplishments of this novel is the way it beautifully and convincingly--and with the compassion others have mentioned here--evokes and channels the female experience, granting it true complexity. This isn't something we've seen in the historical fiction of the men of previous generations, and is just a part of the great feat of imagination that makes this novel such a success.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Welsh girl, April 24, 2007

By	R. Mircheff - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Welsh Girl (Hardcover)

The Welsh Girl is a novel set in Wales during the last days of WWII. Its themes concern the meaning of nationality and the concept of betrayal. Let me say it is a lovely, thought provoking book about memorable characters with whom it is easy to empathizise; of recently read novels, it comes closest to Cold Mountain (Frazier) in its reflection on war and how war effects ordinary men and women. However, it is not nearly as graphically violent. The Welsh Girl is a quiet novel inviting the reader to reflect on the meaning of national identity and the concept of betrayal.
Toward the end of WWII, the British build a POW camp in a small Welsh village. The Welsh feel insulted by this, as they do by the very presence of the English. After all, it is the English who have attempted to deny the Welsh both their language and their culture. In fact, throughout the novel, the Welsh struggle with who to view as the greater enemy - the British or the Germans. Esther is a young woman caught in the tangled loyalties of the time. Wooed by native Welsh boys of her community, she finds them too limiting; attracted to the more worldly English soldiers, she finds herself betrayed; falling in love with the German POW, she is at a loss on how to reconcile this with the reality of life after the war.
Author Davies also explores the relationship of young men to family and cultural expectations during war. Karsten, the young German POW, struggles with his surrender to the British forces. Was this a betrayal of his loyalty not only to his country but to his family's view of what a soldier should be? His father was a submarine soldier killed during WWI. What was the truth behind his father's views on war? How will his mother react to Karsten's surrender? Is it better to die for the cause? Most complex are the issues of nationality and loyalty to Rotheram. Rotheram's father, also killed during WWI, was Jewish. His mother was German Lutheran. Rotheram, who never knew his father, thought of himself as German Lutheran. At the beginning of the war, the power of the Nazi party held a strong attraction to him as it did for many young people. Rotheram felt himself betrayed on many levels - and yet ultimately felt the most free at the end of the war for the very reason that he was no longer tied to any nationality. He had been equally scorned by all. He no longer had a Fatherland or a Mother tongue.*
What role does language play in our cultural identity? Can we tell by looking at someone what their national identity is? (Karsten agonizes over the fact that Jewish people are supposed to be the "other" according to Nazi policy and to his mother's beliefs and yet he cannot "see" the difference; Rotheram assumes the Welsh bartender refuses serving him because he is Jewish, but in fact it is because the bartender "sees" him as English).
The author does justice to even the most minor characters - each add a significant voice to the themes of the novel. At some point during the reading I felt the walls of the novel expand way beyond the setting of WWII to our present day. "Fear will make you believe anything," said a character ...and yet what are the consequences of that? Today?