Resistance by Owen Sheers

I read this as I have enjoyed some of Sheers' work in the past, and as he was doing a book signing at the shop where I worked over the summer I thought I'd better read it.

Resistance quickly became my crappy holiday read. It was mildly interesting and didn't require any deep thought to get through it. I didn't enjoy it hugely, but equally I felt like I should finish it.

It tells the story of Sarah Lewis and her neighbours in an isolated Welsh valley during an imagined Nazi invasion of Britain during the Second World War. An German patrol comes to the valley for mysterious reasons, and ends up staying there. Meanwhile, the husbands of the women of the valley have gone missing, leaving in the night soon after the first wave of invasion. Whilst worrying about their husbands, Sarah and her neighbours must swallow the unsavoury fact that if they want to keep their farms running during their husbands' absence, they will need to bury the hatchet when it comes to dealing with the occupying patrol.

I think the reason this book didn't really click with me was that such a large proportion of it describes the women's rural labours and the landscape - this is not a book of action. Also, the human relationships on which the whole plot hinges didn't ring true. The old creative-writing adage of 'show not tell' may be cliched but I felt as if Sheers would have done better in applying it more meticulously. Instead of letting the plot, character formation and dialogue speak for themselves, at times I felt as if I were being lectured; it felt a bit contrived and 'try-hard' at times. For me, it certainly lacked the spark of Sheers' poetry.

However, the film of Resistance is soon to be released, and despite it being my crappy holiday read, I can't deny that Sheers has achieved the dream of many people - his first novel has been turned into a film, and he will quite possibly make megabucks, despite the fact to me Resistance was disapointingly lack-lustre.