I was really intrigued by the sound of this novel. Partly that was because I liked the sound of the setting, a remote valley in North Wales, a part of the country I know relatively well and love very much. But also I was drawn to the idea of rewritten history. Set in the early 1940s, Resistance depicts a Britain in which the Germans have invaded. Elsewhere in the country fighting is still continuing, but essentially it is under German rule. Small groups of people are mounting various underground resistance movements, with varying degrees of success.
As for the plot, it too sounded fascinating. As the novel begins, a handful of farmers' wives awaken one morning to find their husbands have disappeared overnight. No notes have been left, nothing has been said to prepare them. All the women are shocked, and the discovery that they are all in the same situation adds to their fear and anxiety. Gradually, they come to realise that the men must have planned this disappearance in order to form an underground resistance cell, though this knowledge is not exactly comforting. In addition to the worry, and the sheer missing of the men's company, they are now forced to do all the hardest farm work on their own. Soon, into the valley comes a small troop of German soldiers. Their presence is highly disturbing for the women, and the reason for their being there inexplicable. But slowly, over the course of a long winter, the hardest anyone can remember, the barriers of mistrust break down. The Germans, most of them young, start to help out on the farms, and the women come to rely on them and even to like them. But when the spring comes, and the valley is no longer cut off from the outside world, things becomes difficult, complicated, and eventually tragic.
The main protagonists of the novel are a young woman, Sarah Lewis, and the German officer Albrecht Wolfram. Sarah, at first angry, suspicious, hurt, is very slow to trust the young German, who is an intelligent, cultured man, an Oxford-educated scholar, who is increasingly drawn to her by her beauty and her sharp intelligence. In spite of her misgivings Sarah does allow herself to form a friendship with Albrecht, though what the outcome of this is I am not at liberty to tell you.
I thought all this was beautifully done. OK, that plot line is not exactly original, but Sheers handles it with great perceptiveness and sensitivity. The alternative history is truly thought-provoking, and makes you realise how easily, indeed, this could really have happened here, as it did in many other European countries. As for the quality of the writing, it is really fine --Sheers is a poet, and his prose is a delight to read. Highly recommended.
