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Review of the book “Resistance”

This review made me want to read the book. I was, at first, disappointed. Setting the scene, with what seemed- but was it my own impatience? – rather laboured descriptions of that lonely Welsh valley and of the women left to farm without their husbands, took a long time. And yet, I know that country a bit, and love it.

For me, the book came to life with the arrival of the Germans, and then their work together with the abandoned women during the long snowed-in winter, for sheer survival. During this part of my reading I did not worry about the ending- just like the characters in the book. But finally the thaw did come- and contact with the outside world was bound to take place. What would happen? Would old enmities resurface? Who would prove to be the biggest danger- the English/Welsh insurgents, or the German army wondering why that unit had not contacted them for so long? Could the frail but precious resumption of a more human existence by the soldiers survive the effects of war?

The author’s “Afterword” seemed to sound a different note. I found in it the sound of justification: “The struggle against fascism” brings us back to the world of clichés. Assassination led- in actuality, and in the book- to terrible reprisals by the occupying army, the loss of many innocent lives for the sake the death of one enemy. And the “insurgents” of the resistance- in other countries and other times they are called terrorists.

Then I reread the review, and appreciated it all the more.

Tilo Ulbricht