Product Description

In an imagined alternative 1944, after the fall of Russia and the failed D-Day landings, half of Britain is occupied...Young farmer's wife Sarah Lewis wakes to find her husband has disappeared, along with all of the men from her remote Welsh village. A German patrol arrives in the valley, the purpose of their mission a mystery. Sarah begins a faltering acquaintance with the patrol's commanding officer, Albrecht, and it is to her that he reveals the purpose of his mission - to claim an extraordinary medieval art treasure that lies hidden in the valley. But as the pressure of the war beyond presses in on this isolated community, this fragile state of harmony is increasingly threatened.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #243048 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 289 pages

Review
In an atmospheric alternative history of World War II, the Nazis invade Great Britain, but a false peace lingers in one remote Welsh valley.British author Sheers's sensitive fiction debut pits the harsh, lyrical beauty of the natural world against the unnatural, ultimately unavoidable cruelties of war. As his story opens in the fall of 1944, the Germans are spreading across southern England after defeating the Allies at Normandy. A long-planned British resistance operation is set in motion: Overnight, seven men with farms in the Olchon valley on the Welsh borders disappear, leaving their wives to manage the backbreaking work of tending crops and animals and to wonder unceasingly about their husbands' well-being. Soon cultured, English-speaking Captain Albrecht Wolfram and his troop of five soldiers arrive on a mysterious mission. Wolfram, skeptical of the Nazi Party's "quasi-biblical language" and "banal certainty," recognizes that this ancient, secluded valley offers him and his men a haven from the war. Instead of behaving like occupiers, they help the women through a harsh winter. Wolfram's warm friendship with a young sheep farmer, Sarah Lewis, is only the most prominent of the developing relationships that lead a young member of the resistance to discern signs of collaboration among the valley women. After a period of stasis, the inevitable rude awakening ensues. There will be no happy endings.Not really a conventional war drama, but an oblique, enigmatic ode to Welsh culture, landscape and loyalties. (Kirkus Reviews)

Daily Mail
'Mixing lush descriptions of the landscape with a very human story of war ... this is a sparkling debut.'

Financial Times
'Engrossing ...convincingly scripted and full of poetry, RESISTANCE remains haunted by the darkest fears and memories.'

Customer Reviews

Rot
The cover makes it look like a Catherine Cookson and, really, that should have been the first warning sign but I ignored my instincts and persisted with this self-satisfied bilge.
I would have hoped that the world had moved on from this particular brand of bloated prose with its homely, wistful yearning for a Welshness that, if it ever existed, never did any of them much good. In any case, the what-if premise has been done much better elsewhere.
Dear God, why am I even bothering to write about this book?! I loathed it! My advice is - if you must, get it from the library. Save your pennies for something with a bit of intellectual fibre.

A valley side too far
In Resistance Owen Sheers re-writes the history of World War Two. Germany has invaded Britain. The United States, having suffered reversals both east and west, has retreated home to navel gaze. Britain thus is occupied, but has not yet succumbed.

In a remote rural community on the Welsh borders, a whole valley of farming families awakes one morning to find that all the men have gone. No-one knows where. They were recruited, perhaps, into an underground resistance and not one of them let slip any of the details. This, frankly, is incredible.

The demands of farming, however, continue, despite invasions and estrangement. Sarah, though devastated by her husband's, Tom's, disappearance, must battle on. There are dogs to see to, lambs to nurture, pigs to feed and foals to train. This permanence of landscape and activity is thus set against massive upheaval. Not only have the men gone, but German troops have appeared, troops who seem to be more on holiday than at war. Again, incredible.

Alex is good with animals and helps at Sarah's farm, as does Albrecht, an English-speaking, Oxford-educated academic, uncomfortable in military garb. Relationships develop, whilst most involved apparently remain increasingly apologetic.

Owen Sheers also wants us to believe a scenario for conquest where the invaders lay siege to the cities. Again this lacks credibility, since German military success in the Second World War seemed to come when invasions went straight to the centre. Where they lay siege, such as Leningrad or Stalingrad, they failed. But then the whole point is that the history has been reversed.

In a situation where passions and tempers would probably have been frayed, tested at least, Owen Sheers presents a community that seems to survive just as before, minus the local males. Resistance is well written and is very readable, often beautiful. But it does demand that one's belief be suspended from very high indeed.

Owen Goal
"Resistance" by Owen Sheers adopts the most familiar of alternative-history devices, the Axis victory in World War Two, as a platform for his debut novel about Welsh resistance to the successful Nazi invasion of Britain. I'm afraid I found the resulting plot pedestrian, uninvolving and resistible. But Sheers' prose is a different matter - this is a writer with real talent, and I would look forward to his next book with the hope of a story that can match it.