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: #222740 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

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.

Superb lyrical writing
Well, L K von Weber, I was another reader who cried while reading Resistance, and I'm glad that someone else felt the same. The writing is superb and Owen Sheers' description of the Welsh countryside brought out the emotional Celt in me too. City-dwellers may find his descriptions a little over-loving, but I think they are missing the point here.

Resistance begs the question - what if? What would anyone have done in the same set of circumstances, particularly living in such harsh conditions without men to help on the farm? The words "co-operation" and "collaboration" are very close and most of us are not heroes. The novel also explores the relationship between the invader and the invaded and how relationships become closer in those conditions.

This novel made me think of another called Island Madness by Tim Binding which is set in the German-occupied Channel Islands. The themes are very similar and the question "what if?" raises its head again.

I felt the cover of Resistance could have been better. It gives a very mixed message and the novel could have been dismissed as "romance" by some readers who didn't venture beyond the cover. Otherwise, an excellent read and I would read future novels by this writer.

An intriguing premise
I'm still trying to decide what I feel about 'Resistance'. It's beautifully written, the author is a poet and it shows, but sometimes I feel there's an element of: 'Look what a beautiful phrase that was'. And it's very slow-moving. Not a real fault as such, it takes the reader through the winter, which IS slow, but there are times when the story drags. And it's sad, tragic - of course it is. You know there won't be, can't be, a happy ending but you really want one. However I found the ending SO enigmatic that I'm still not totally clear exactly what happened, except that it all ended horribly. I didn't want all the loose ends tied up neatly but I'd have though it would have been possible to spell it out a little more clearly and still leave the reader wanting more.
I checked out some reviews on Amazon and one of them sniffed that the cover made it look like 'a wartime romance'. Well, maybe not romance as such, but it's definitely a 'romantic' novel, which is no bad thing. It somehow doesn't fit the `epic tragedy' that the story suggests and I think I felt slightly cheated because I wanted more; more depth, more story, more ending.
It's a good, intriguing read, though I felt it wasn't quite in the same league as 'Fatherland' by Robert Harris,another 'what if' book.

'Resistance' would make a terrific film.