Jessica O’Brien
AAS 220
10/16/11
The Welsh Girl
The book that I chose to review is Peter Ho Davies’s The Welsh Girl. The story mainly revolves around three central characters. The main character is Esther Williams, a young seventeen-year-old girl who is desperate to get out of her secluded Welsh village and see the world. Another character who we follow is Karstan an eighteen year old Nazi who, in order to save his fellow soldiers, has surrendered to the British army and is now in a prisoner of war camp. It is here that Karstan begins to contemplate what honor means to him and this is where he meets Esther. Finally we meet Rotheram a German Jew who has fled to England, and now finds himself interrogating Rudolf Hess. The book its self is entertaining, however this is Peter Ho Davies first full-length novel and there are definitely some things that he could he done better. Esther is a very interesting character; she has a thirst for knowledge of the world and a need for excitement, however her love life is very confusing. While Esther is a very entertaining character the ones that really steal the show are Karstan and Rotheram. Karstan is a young newly enlisted solider who is deeply respected by his men. However, when a life or death decision is upon him he chooses surrender in order to save himself and his men. Rotheram is in many ways a foil to Karstan, he is a German Jew who has fled to Britain with his mother he is now a subject to Rudolf Hess’s mind games and is beginning to question where his loyalties lie.
When we first meet Esther she is a barmaid working in a pub located in a small village in Wales. There she meets an English solider named Colin, at first things seem to go well between the two of them, but then things go very badly, and she becomes pregnant. After this we find out about two other men she was in love with, one is Eric who was an evacuee who later died after returning home, and the other is Rhys, a farmhand who enlists and is labeled as missing in action and presumed dead. Then later on in the book we meet Karstan. Through out the book she is at war with her self on who the father of the child is, Rhys or Colin. At the end of the book that we find out who the father is, and when she does reveal the father there is no lead up as to how the conclusion could make sense. She also seems to change who she is in love with per chapter. At first she seems as if she is leaning more toward having an abortion, but then once again, she changes her mind again and decides to keep the child. One of the things that was enticing about the revelation scene is that when she tells her father it is very mater of fact, and it is a huge breakthrough of emotion for her father’s character.
Karstan is certainly one of the more interesting characters. Karstan is constantly in turmoil thinking about whether his surrender was the right thing to do, and what his mother will think of him. He also has a great deal of respect for his men, and he cares for them even while he is in the camp. It is while he is there that he meets Esther. She talks to him only for a moment but it is enough to leave him infatuated. The relationship of Karstan and Esther is very one sided at this point. Esther is now trying to figure out so many other things in her life, and Karstan is really only trying to work on himself, leaving him with more time to think about a relationship. Another person he meets is with a young British evacuee, Jim, who is currently living with Esther. Karstan sees Jim as both a playmate and as his outside connection to Esther. The author uses this character to talk about the idea of freedom. There is one chapter where Karstan escapes and he talks about how the moment that he got out of the camp was wonderful, but after that he begins to feel the burdens of freedom. He then decides that freedom does not necessarily mean physical freedom but something much more. The only problem that remains with this character is that he seems very stoic where he should be more emotional, such as the scene where he sees battle for the first time.
Like the other characters of this story Rotheram finds himself in a strange predicament, he is a German Jew in the British Army interrogating Rudolf Hess. Rotheram has tried for years to cover up his German background, and to become British. In one scene he is elated when he is denied service at Esther’s pub because the owner thinks he is British. Then he is given an assignment to interrogate Rudolf Hess, who is notorious for either faking amnesia or was actually afflicted by the disease. It is at this point that Hess tries to unravel Rotheram, who in the end remains proud of his British roots. However it is not until the end of the novel where he is given the task of investigating Karstan’s escape, do we see him attached to the other two main characters. It is almost as if the author has written two stories that suddenly combined at the end.
This story is a beautiful written story. The Welsh Girl tells us the story of love, trust, and defines meaning of honor. Even with all of its faults the book remains a wonderful story about people, the mistakes they make, and the things that they do in order to redeem those mistakes. In this book we are given three very well written and very defined characters along with other side characters that create a wonderful, vibrant vision of World War Two.
Works Cited
Davies, Peter Ho. The Welsh Girl. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.
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