The Welsh Girl is a novel about a young girl, the seventeen year old Esther, who is kept in her confined mountain village by her over protective father. While she woks as a barmaid, Esther dreams of the dangerous world that she hears of on the BBC broadcast channel. The time is World War Two, it is at this period that Esther gets her first contact to the outside world through a prisoner of war camp that is set up outside of her village. It is there that she meets Karstan A young german officer who is in the midst for figuring out what honor and freedom mean to him, it is durring this time that the two fall in love. The main parts of the book are told through the point of views of Esther, Karstan, and Rotheram a interrogator sent to talk to Herman Hess. The book covers many themes such as love, war, and understanding. in the beginning Karstan and Esther do not even speak the same language, how ever once they come to understand both each other and their languages the two of them begin to fall in love. One of the other themes that the book is war, we see how it is that war makes people question what is right and wrong, and causes us to question what is honor?
Davies, Peter Ho. The Ugliest House in the World: Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Print.
The Ugliest House on the Left is a compilation of short stories. The stories seem to be mostly about the relationships between fathers and sons. A great deal of them talk about growing up and almost all of them take place in the Welsh country side. The first part of the book titled the Ugliest House in the World, follows a young man on his trip to see his father in wales through a series of short stories. In these stories we meet Kate, Her six-year -old son Gareth, and the narrators father. The second half of the book seems to cover a number of different topics such as war and suicide. one of the last stories is the story of a man who, after the death of his daughter, begins to volunteer for a suicide life line, it is there that he meets Mary a transvestite, the two of them begin to talk and they become fast friends. One theme that all of the stories have in common is the theme of death. in most of his stories we see the characters either dealing with the oncoming death of a loved one or in one case the death of an identity.
Davies, Peter Ho. Equal Love. London: Granta, 2000. Print.
One of the largest themes is the book Equal Love, is family. in each of he stories there is always some mention of family. The very first story is about about a mixed race couple who are trying to start a family, but have been having some problems. until they see an unidentified flying object. another one of the stories depicts a girl, who's parents had just been divorced , watches her father perform dental surgeries on other children. Peter Ho Davies seems to think that family is a very important element. in almost all of his stories we hear about families particularly in the connections between parents and children. Like his other works death plays a crucial roll in these stories. In the second story we see the father crying over the death of a patient, and in another we see a son putting on a very expensive funeral for his father who had been the owner of the chinese newspaper on the west coast. In this story we see a son reflecting on his relationship with his father during his fathers funeral, it is there that he realizes that he has always loved his father and that his father had always loved him.
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