Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73592 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Observer
'[A] devastating tale.'

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.