The Welsh Girl: Peter Ho Davies
Sceptre Paperback $24.99
******
By Nina Cullen
Heavy with the expectations of a Man Booker nomination, and with a cover filled with quotes of approval, Davies has been lauded as an accomplished short story writer and, now, a successful novelist.
Set in Snowdonia in the final months of WW2, The Welsh Girl follows the stories of a British Major of German-Jewish background; a German captain who surrendered in France; and a Welsh farm girl dreaming beyond her bland dimensions.
The unnamed, fiercely nationalistic Welsh village where the book is set has fallen on hard times after the closure of slate mines. When locals find out English soldiers are building a camp for German prisoners, the moral maths of choosing sides begins to play out. We see the sad churning of the glory machine on the home front, and the fear and confusion of those on the battle-lines, who send home news of honour and bravery, too scared to ruin the illusion.
There is something surreal here, something ridiculous but realistic in the crazed context of war. The sequence of events jumbles loyalties, blurs histories and scatters people in a random radius. There's an accelerated intimacy and these relationships Davies observes most skilfully. Central to these connections between characters is the freedom that they offer: the Major trying to shrug off the history of his heritage; the Captain more interested in redeeming his honour than getting out of jail. And the Welsh Girl herself, kept stationary by the landscape, and the expectations that lock her in from all sides.
Davies' research is meticulous, but in the opening chapters his attention to detail acts to decelerate the story. It's not so much that the inclusion of facts feels conscious, (it is mostly effortless - and I love that I now know tall men were rejected for submarine service). It's just that while he explains times, dates and battle manoeuvres, there are characters, left in rainy fields and badly-lit barracks, you keep wanting to get back to.