Resistance
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Overview
Resistance is a beautifully written and powerful story set during an imagined occupation of Britain by Nazi Germany in World War II.In a remote and rugged Welsh valley in 1944, in the wake of a German invasion, all the men have disappeared overnight, apparently to join the underground resistance. Their abandoned wives, a tiny group of farm women, are soon trapped in the valley by an unusually harsh winter—along with a handful of war-weary German soldiers on a secret mission. The need to survive drives the soldiers and the women into uneasy relationships that test both their personal and national loyalties. But when the snow finally melts, bringing them back into contact with the war that has been raging beyond their mountains, they must face the dramatic consequences of their choices.
Synopsis
Resistance is a beautifully written and powerful story set during an imagined occupation of Britain by Nazi Germany in World War II.
In a remote and rugged Welsh valley in 1944, in the wake of a German invasion, all the men have disappeared overnight, apparently to join the underground resistance. Their abandoned wives, a tiny group of farm women, are soon trapped in the valley by an unusually harsh winter—along with a handful of war-weary German soldiers on a secret mission. The need to survive drives the soldiers and the women into uneasy relationships that test both their personal and national loyalties. But when the snow finally melts, bringing them back into contact with the war that has been raging beyond their mountains, they must face the dramatic consequences of their choices.
The Washington Post - Frances Itani
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.
Editorials
Frances Itani
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.—The Washington Post
Jess Row
Sheers is at his best describing the everyday rituals of rural life amid the rocky and unforgiving Welsh countryside, and in particular the tenderness exerted by the women in caring for their livestock in a strangely childless community. The novel's most memorable image is of an orphaned lamb sewn into the skin of a larger, dead lamb to lure the bereaved ewe into accepting the orphan as her own. That mixture of brutality and kindness—the bloody exigencies carried out not only in wartime, but in everyday rural life—is the great insight of Resistance.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
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. (Feb.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationLibrary Journal
By all appearances, this debut novel by an award-winning Welsh poet can be readily classified as a work of genre fiction, specifically the alternate history genre. Sheers convincingly reimagines the events of World War II; it is late 1944, and the Germans, fresh from their victory against the Russians on the eastern front, have successfully invaded and occupied England. One morning, a group of women in a remote Welsh valley awake to find their husbands have left them to join the resistance. Soon, a German patrol arrives on a mysterious mission, and the two groups are forced together when a blizzard cuts the valley off from the outside world. Sheers's debut can no more be dismissed as a genre novel than can a novel such as Philip Roth's The Plot Against America . Like Roth, Sheers uses the genre to explore broader themes, particularly focusing on the different ways in which characters on both sides of the conflict alternately resist and accommodate themselves to war and occupation. Sheers has written a suspenseful narrative set against a beautifully evoked landscape. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. [For another World War II novel set in Wales, see also Peter Ho Davies's The Welsh Girl .-Ed.]-Douglas Southard, CRA International Lib., Boston
Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.School Library Journal
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. (Feb.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information