12:54p.m. 29th February 2008

| Ray Franklin

Title: Resistance

Author: Owen Sheers

Publisher: Faber & Faber, rrp $32.95

Review: Ray Franklin

Resistance is a complex work based on a very simple premise: what would have been the likely outcome if Hitler’s troops had successfully invaded Britain during the Second World War?

In his debut novel, Owen Sheers conjures up a convincing alternative reality where the D-Day landings failed in 1944, and a powerful German counter-attack saw them in control of most of Britain within a few weeks.

But large sections of the British mainland remain unconquered and, as always, border territories have their own realities. Resistance is set in the wild and remote Welsh border valley of Olchon, where isolation breeds both independence and a stubborn indifference to outsiders.

Eventually, though, the Germans do find their way into the valley, just a small patrol at first, engaged on a secret and mysterious mission. Overnight, all the valley menfolk disappear, apparently to join a clandestine resistance movement.

They leave behind them a puzzled, all-female community to work the farms and confront the invaders.

And then winter sets in, the long, life-sapping winter of the Welsh highlands, and the two sides are forced together in a mutual battle for survival.

Resistance is an absorbing, cleverly-constructed tale, and elegantly told. It’s a story that works on several levels: as a thriller, a mystery concerning the Germans’ secret mission, and as a psychological drama confronting the wholly different parameters of war after the front-line fighting has stopped. It’s well worth a look.