Lowly’s Book Blog

I finished this most interesting book last night, and I still don’t know quite what to think. Apparently the author is an award winning short story writer, and I am not much good at all the modern short story techniques, so maybe that is why I am still pondering.

Anyway, this books is set in 1944, on and soon after D-Day. The book opens with the British interrogation of Hess, and the translator is an escaped German of Jewish descent. After this the young German is placed as a spy with German POWs and eventually sent to Wales on a secret mission. Part 2 is about Esther, a young woman working on her father’s sheep farm and pulling beers in the local pub evenings. Esther dreams of a glamorous future far away, but in reality she knows that she must look after her father. She is as tied to the land as the sheep who know the mountain paddocks where they belong. A local boy is in love with Esther, but she has caught the eye of one of the young soldiers building a camp nearby. A late night date, a walk in the new camp, an error of communication, and suddenly Esther has something to hide. Part 3 begins on the coast of France on D-Day. Karsten, a young German corporal orders the men in his bunker to surrender once they run out of ammunition. Together the three of them become POWs and after a difficult time that shows how little preparation was done for prisoners, all three find themselves in a brand new POW camp in Wales. You guessed it, right next to Esther’s farm. The local louts create a new hobby of prisoner baiting, and Esther gets involved when the young evacuee she and her father are looking after joins the fun. From there you have to read for yourself.

I found this book very credible. All parts of the plot were logical and the characters were realistic, flawed and frightened. The flavour of the traditional Welsh village in summer was almost sensual.

However, I suspect there are more layers to this book than a simple historical romance. The whole point of Rotherham, the German Jew, was lost on me. I would easily have been satisfied with the story of Esther, Colin, Rhys and Karsten. And those readers with a passion for literary analysis would make much of the theme of separation that continually appears in many many disguises.

Overall, I think I liked it. Perhaps I even wish I had time to read it, or parts of it, again.