Sandy at You’ve Gotta Read This! recently reviewed Owen Sheers’ Resistance for the WWII Challenge.  Here’s some of what she had to say:

In an alternative WWII in 1944, Germany has invaded Britain and has occupied a vast majority of the country.  . . . Sheers artfully introduces various themes of resistance into the story. There are the British resistance fighters waging their solitary war against the Germany army, which we expect. But we also sense the wives’ resistance in believing they truly have been left alone forever by their husbands.

Read her entire review here.

**Attention participants:  Remember to email us a link to your reviews, and we’ll post them here so we can see what everyone is reading!**

The Guardian speaks to Owen Sheers about White Ravens, his re-telling of part of the Mabinogion of Welsh mythology.

I’m back. Or at least I should be. Earlier this week I finished a big project at work. Early next week I should know whether I’m sticking around at the same office for a few more months leading another big project or whether my job is over. In that case I might still work for the company on a project-by-project base, but no longer as a regular job. Either way, I’m pretty much free until the middle of November at least. I plan to do lots of writing and take up regular blogging again here and on my other blog. So here I am, writing my first serious review in months. Feels strange, like I have to get the hang of it again. But I’m happy to sit at a computer and write instead of work.

Two days ago I finished Owen Sheers’ Resistance. Initially, when the book first came out in 2007 and I started reading about it on blogs, I wasn’t that keen on picking it up. It didn’t speak to me, really. But the book grew on me and eventually I added a copy to my TBR-pile. And now that I’ve read Resistance, I’m glad I did. But just like wanting to read the book took some time to develop, the story itself needed some time to grow on me. But once it did, I enjoyed it a lot.

The story is set in the isolated Olchon valley on the Welsh border in 1944-1945 where only a handful of families live. One summer morning, the women wake up to find their husbands gone without saying goodbye and without leaving a trace. Germany has just invaded England and the women suspect and fear their men have retreated into the hills surrounding the valley and joined the resistance movement. Wait a second? Germany has just invaded England? Yes, you read that right. Resistance is set during the Second World War, but with an alternative outcome in which England has been invaded and occupied by the German army.

After living on their own for several weeks and trying to cope with the sudden disappearance of their husbands and with the heavy-burden farm life, one day suddenly a small patrol of five German soldiers arrives in the valley with. The patrol settles into an abandoned house. Their arrival throws the women’s routine upside down. When an especially harsh winter sets in, the two groups have to decide whether to trust and help each other survive. This is not only the story of the two groups becoming mutually dependent, but it is also the story of one of the women, Sarah Lewis, who begins a careful friendship with the patrol’s commanding officer, Albrecht Wolfram. In the course of the winter and the following spring, it becomes ever clearer that decisions have to be taken, but also that any decisions taken cannot but upset the careful balance of the valley’s inhabitants.

The copy I have, has a blurb on the cover describing Resistance as a “sometimes frightening thriller”. The book is many things, but I would not classify it as a thriller and I think people who expect a thriller based on this blurb are in for a surprise. The pace is not fast, and in fact in a way not a whole lot is happening. I think that may be why the book needed time to grow on me. Owen Sheers’ writing is beautiful, though, it makes the valley and the people come alive, the sparseness of the landscape and of the valley inhabitants’ way of communication, the isolation of the people. The title of the book is well-chosen: throughout the book I kept identifying new references to the theme of resistance, ones that go way beyond the obvious. If I have to mention one thing I didn’t like, it can only be that the reason why the German patrol comes to the valley felt contrived an unconvincing. Though in the author’s afterword it becomes apparent that this is one of the aspects of the book based on a true story. Resistance at first glance seems a quiet and somewhat unassuming book, but it leaves one with a lot to think about. Very much recommended.

Other reviews:
Caribousmom
Dovegrey Reader
Estella’s Revenge
Ready when you are, C.B.
Oklahoma Booklady
Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover
The Linguavore
Page 247
Textual Frigate
A Book a Week
Quippe
Hawkins Bizarre

If you reviewed this book on your blog as well, leave a link to your review and I will include it in the list

On Friday, Leigh and I took a well-earned break from the office and spent the day at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. We had a genuinely lovely day. Not necessarily because of the events we paid to attend (although they were all excellent, both entertaining and insightful) but because of the room it gave us to think and to be challenged intellectually. Owen Sheers made me want to rediscover poetry and to seek out his BBC4 programme on iPlayer; the discussion on mad women in literature triggered a desire to discover a few unread classics; and the subject of journalism writing history highlighted global issues I know scarcely enough about to make the kind of judgements I find myself making.

If only I had the time to do all of those things: to read non-fiction, classics, poetry, political diaries; to watch documentaries about subjects that are new to me; to visit places that will stimulate me. I do have that time. I am simply too distracted by day-to-day living but also by the technology in my home, which requires little attention, wastes many hours and allows me to passively absorb information – little of it of any consequence – in bite sized chunks. A case in point: this week I have tried (and failed) to read three different books. This is not the fault of the books. It is my painfully and increasingly short attention span.

I would like our day at the literature festival to change that.

Some other observations from Friday:
1. I was having breakfast (well, coffee) in Starbucks. They’ve started asking for your first name when you order and then proceed to shout, “tall Americano with room for milk for Jenn!” I don’t like it.
2. Leigh phoned whilst I was in Starbucks to say she was lost (she really, really was). I used Google Latitude to find her and it worked a treat.
3. I was impressed by the sheer number of children at the festival and completely bowled over by their delight and enthusiasm as they had books signed by authors such as Anthony Horowitz and Julia Donaldson. I was bowled over in a very different sense by the number of adults queuing to meet Alan Titchmarsh.
4. There was a lovely European market on the Promenade and it was there that I discovered that sweet ginger is delicious when eaten together with sundried tomatoes.

The BBC, in their infinite wisdom, are trying to germinate the nation’s poetic seed.

John Dryden, first Poet Laureate

We’ve recently had Ian Hislop expounding the bizarre tradition of appointing a national Poet Laureate, in Changing of the Bard on BBC4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kk49c;

Roger McGough revealing the not-so-clandestine secrets of Radio 4’s Poetry Please

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qp7q) in Thirty Years of the People’s Poetry, also on BBC4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kk499;

& Owen Sheers, (yes, BBC4), presenting a series of programmes on 6 works of poetry intrinsically linked to the British landscape, exploring place & identity whilst illuminating the lives of the poets themselves

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00k99tf.

(The 6, for those interested, thus far include that most repressed of Romantics, Wordsworth; Sylvia Plath; George Mackay Brown; Matthew Arnold & Lynette Roberts).

A veritable collection indeed,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/whats_on.shtml

& at a time when the Beeb’s coverage of Carol Ann Duffy’s elevation to Laureate at times rivalled, somewhat embarrassingly, even the most important world news in its hyperbole & devotion. Now, far be it for me to criticise the BBC for setting themselves up as the nation’s cultural purveyor, or encouraging our leaden imaginations to re-engage with the wisdom of bards old & new, it just slightly smacks of that favoured middle-class pursuit – culture for the masses, accessibility for the great unwashed, reclaiming the nation’s literature. And as such, I’m inclined to say bleughh.

Bleughh.

Bleughh

Bleuggg-hhhh!

It’s just all so fucking contrived, this BBC Poetry Season. Let Poetry into Your Life (oh, my, so very kind…the smiling graduates who finally nailed that copy don’t need a kicking, do they?) even includes a vote (what doesn’t these days) to discover Who…is…the…Nation’s…Favourite…Poet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/

Ok, so it doesn’t appeal to me, so it’s the sort of meaningless exercise which makes those who exist at the bureaucratic periphery of the Arts Council feel good about themselves, a pat on the back for those schedulers who argue that television should have some semblance of educational core (aaagh!), a hip-hip-hooray for all those newly employed Drama & Media graduates, fresh from the University for the Province of Enlightenment, whose lives have been so enriched by that one book they happened to accidentally study in a subsidiary module in the 1st semester of their 2nd year.

BBC ideas room...

Hip-hip-hooray – how they must shine their BBC security passes with pride, knowing their grand ideas have made such a worthy contribution to our poor, mundane, prosaic little lives.

Ok, so like I said, it doesn’t appeal, I regard it with the same opprobrium as The Big Read (BBC) http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/

& The Play’s the Thing (Channel 4) http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/T/the_play/show.html.

If I remember rightly Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings was The-Big-Read (& A-Big-Bore) whilst the top 10 included such delights as Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter & the Something or Other, & His Dark Materials…you get the idea…(Catcher in the Rye only 15? Tess of the D’Urbervilles 26? Crime & Punishment 60?!).  But I’m not so dumb as to fail to comprehend such programmes’ appeal &, though I loathe myself for saying it, well-meaning intentions.

However – then I had a quick gander at the shortlist which those talking heads with their tweed jackets & hessian hair, those seers & sages who collectively prop up the Arts Council & The Poetry Society (itself, like something from Monty Python), deemed necessary to provide, lest us poor unread minions were incapable of nominating our favoured poets ourselves.

The Poetry Society?

And it reads thus…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/poetryseason/captcha

Now, I’m all for Blake, Yeats, Larkin & Sylvia Plath. & I’m forever laying myself prostrate before the genius of Coleridge, the only true revolutionary of the Romantics.

Coleridge

& I apprehensively accept – whilst stabbing my eyes out – that somebody of a certain age & somewhat whimsical disposition might be in the thrall of fusty old John Betjeman. But where in this list is Percy Bysshe Shelley? Where the inimitable simplicity of John Clare (a poet so effortless that all the Romantics, with the exception of Byron, who couldn’t possibly imagine that anybody might be his better, cited Clare as the greatest & most neglected poet of their age)? Where Emily Dickinson, a particular favourite for women but also a trail-blazer in her own right & not simply the author of the funereal eulogies we nowadays associate with her? Where Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, along with Dickinson another stalwart of the Victorian struggle for literary parity? Where Siegfried Sassoon? Where Walt Whitman? Where Federico Garcia Lorca, the man who brought surrealism into poetry & the hitherto impenetrable idea of duende to international consciousness? Where Pablo Neruda? Where Thom Gunn? AND WHERE THE FUCK IS SHAKESPEARE??!

where the f**k is Shakey?

Even if you are clinically dead you would still include Shakespeare. Even if you have no head you would include Shakespeare. Even the pigeon pecking shit off the pavement would include Shakespeare. He is, indisputably, the poet par excellence, a sonneteer whose words not only already exist in your unconscious (such is his stature within our national psyche) but infiltrate your everyday language. He embodies your own protestations of innocence, your proclamations of love, the suppression of your jealousy, every articulated human emotion he long ago copyrighted. Of all his 154 sonnets, most people will recognise at least 10, 15, 20…find me another poet anywhere in the world who can boast a 10% or greater hit-list. He is to poetry what JS Bach is to the progression of Western Music – you simply can’t imagine what art & culture would be like without his presence. He bestrides not only the past but the present & future. His is the clarity of thought & unerring accuracy of feeling to which we still collectively turn in those moments of extreme national or individual crisis. He is also the only person, along with Bach, whom I can confidently say I consider to be genius, a man beyond mere talent, skill, passion, endeavour, something genuinely super-human in his empathetic ability to squirrel into the core of humanity & emerge holding aloft the still beating, bursting heart within. &, banal though it may seem, he was truly the most exquisite of technicians whilst always pushing boundaries & seeking to subvert.

So, go ahead, Let Poetry into Your Life, please those cultural dullards ensconced in the Beeb’s innovation hub with your embrace of Carol Ann Duffy & Ted Hughes & Auden. Vote for John Donne or Keats or the god-awful Burns. Keep those craggy-cheeked crones at The Poetry Society up all night with anticipation of who they might crown the nation’s bard. Just don’t for one second think that it signifies anything pertinent, for it’s clear from the offset that those who set themselves up as knowing best know really very little at all.

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

William Shakespeare

So there we have it. Daily moan done. I think the nurses are ready with my injection.

© crushedegg

For those interested, there are now 9 short stories up on the assorted shorts page, the 5 most recent being: arresting the gene/every tender memory/the company of strangers/the dying & the going/the underside of your life. There is also material uploaded on the cinephilia pages, what’s good? & sneak preview.

Much more to follow shortly.

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Comments welcome below or email me crushedegg@yahoo.co.uk

I’ve finally caught up with the first episode of Owen Sheers’ series for the BBC poetry season, A Poet’s Guide to Britain, and was enjoying his brief but informative trawl through the thinking and history behind Wordsworth’s sonnet Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, right up until the point that Sheers began to wonder about the detail of what Wordsworth might have been thinking during the month he spent in France arranging to disentangle himself from the mother of his illegitimate child.

Sheers bemoans the lack of detail in Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal: “she’s frustratingly quiet on the things we really want to know about,” he said. “What was it like for William and Annette to see one another again? Was there still any spark? How was it for William to meet his nine year old daughter for the first time?”

I was disappointed – Sheers had seemed sensible and subtle until this point. Why is this “what we really want to know about”? Why can we not be trusted to get a clear idea of the state of Wordsworth’s mind from the sonnets written in and around that month-long beach holiday? Why must everything be reduced to tittle-tattle?

Sheers mentions the sonnet that refers to Wordsworth’s daughter, which begins “It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free”, and suggests that there is a sense of detachment in the closing lines:

‘Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear’st untouch’d by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year;
And worshipp’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.’

There is, but Sheers doesn’t connect this back to his earlier, tediously populist question – he is yearning for dirt on the holiday in Dorothy’s journals, as if she were some sort of paparazzi diarist, when he should have been looking to the poems for answers. However oblique they may be, the answers are in there, in the fond detachment of Wordsworth’s connection with his daughter, in the fact that the second set of sonnets is dedicated to liberty and look often longingly back at England and in this extract from To A Friend, Composed Near Calais: “Yet despair/I feel not: happy am I as a Bird:/Fair seasons yet will come, and hopes as fair.”

One can draw plenty of conclusions from Wordsworth’s sonnets and his sister’s journals without ever submitting to the peculiarly modern need for a prosaic ‘he said, she said’ dialogue. But we are living in an age that demands such minute detail of private lives, gossip and scandal at the expense of subtlety, as everything from the hoo-ha surrounding the Oxford Poetry Professorship to the latest issue of Heat prove; an age of celebrity and personality at the expense of art and artfulness. It is depressing to find that Sheers is as eager as a gossip columnist for clinical details of the arrangements.

I’m not suggesting that we should divorce poet from poems entirely – it is instructive to know that Wordsworth was arranging the freedom to marry Mary Hutchinson whilst he was writing these sonnets in 1802. What I would really like to know, however, is what conclusion readers of Wordsworth’s 1802 sonnets, given the barest biographical detail surrounding the writing of them, would come to as to his state of mind.

WRITTEN IN LONDON,
September, 1802.

O Friend! I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest,
To think that now our Life is only drest
For shew; mean handywork of craftsman, cook,
Or groom! We must run glittering like a Brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest:
The wealthiest man among us is the best:
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expence,
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.

Gavin from Page247 recently posted a review of Resistance by Owen Sheers.  Here’s a snippet:

Resistance by Owen Sheers is based on the premise that D-Day failed and that Germany invaded Great Britain.  The author, a poet, grew up in the area where the story takes place and this shows in the writing.  It is highly descriptive and quite beautiful, weaving the history of the land, a valley on the Welsh border,  with the lives of it’s people.  It is also a description of an occupation and the consequences of war.

Read the complete review here.

**Attention participants:  remember to email us a link to your reviews, and we’ll post them here so we can see what everyone is reading!**

Da var ‘ferien’ over, og skoleåret har startet (I realiteten så har jeg jo jobbet heltid de siste fire ukene). Jeg har hatt min første forelesning, og foreløpig virker alt lovende. Valgfaget mitt foregår på engelsk, og det blir unektelig mange morsomme øyeblikk når foreleserens engelsk ikke er helt stødig… “Many of us are not English-speaking from the begin with” er et utsagn jeg kommer til å huske lenge. Det er folk fra alle slags land som går på disse forelesningene. Iran, Ghana, Nigeria, Canada, Tyskland, Japan osv. Vi er to som snakker norsk i klassen og vi sitter ved siden av hverandre (uten å vite på forhånd at den andre også snakket norsk). Tilfeldig?

Jeg fikk til og med anledning til å praktisere de tre setningene jeg virkelig kan på tysk. Morsomt!

I morgen starter de første forelesningene med “Vitenskapsteori og metode” og jeg må innrømme at jeg ser litt mørkere på det. Hvis det er noe i nærheten av Ex.Phil. eller Ex.Fac. så kommer jeg til å dø.

Ellers så blir det litt dårlig med lesingen for tiden. Heltidsstudium, jobb hvert øyeblikk jeg ikke er på skolen og lørdagsjobb i tillegg. You do the math. I tillegg starter forlagenes bokmøter fra mandag av, så da har jeg ikke fri på kveldstid engang! Jeg må innrømme at disse møtene er frivillige da. Men hvem greier å stå i mot gratis mat, vin og bøker? Ikke jeg!

Med det samme jeg skriver dette, så kommer jeg jo på at jeg har lest èn fantastisk bok siden sist!

“Tett inntil dagene” av Mustafa Can er virkelig et mesterverk, og den fortjener all omtalen og oppmerksomheten den har fått. Dette er ikke en roman, men en dokumentar/selvbiografi. Can er journalist, og han har skrevet om hvordan han opplever moren sin som er førstegenerasjons innvandrer i Sverige. Han forteller om hvordan han har skammet seg over henne, analfabeten med skautet som nesten ikke kunne et ord svensk. Can bruker flere sider på å beskrive hvordan moren omsider lærer seg å skrive sitt eget navn slik at hun kan gå på posten og hente ut barnetrygden selv. Det er ikke før hun ligger for døden at han begynner å få et nyansert bilde av moren sin. Hun har alltid fortalt svært lite om seg selv, men nå begynner hun endelig å fortelle. Vi får se små glimt her og der fra hennes liv, og sakte men sikkert begynner leserens (og Cans) oppfatning av den ‘typiske innvandrerkvinnen’ å forandre seg. Hun har en bakgrunn, hun har et liv og hun ser og vet mer enn Can tror.

Det som gjør denne boken så fantastisk er ikke bare den interessante (og aktuelle) historien, det er Cans språk. Det er poetisk, vakkert, nydelig! Jeg har anbefalt denne boken til mange i bokhandelen, og jeg angrer sannelig ikke når jeg nå endelig har fått lest den selv! Boken passer like godt til både kvinner og menn, og for voksne i alle aldre.

Ps: Jeg har også lest “Oppløsning” av C.J. Sansom og likte den. Sånn rent bortsett fra at Umberto Eco allerede har skrevet historien bedre. Dennis Lehanes “Et glass før krigen” var helt ok, og Owen Sheers “Motstand” var en ganske interessant skildring av hvordan krigen artet seg i en bortgjemt dal i Wales. Da alle kvinnene i dalen våknet var mennene deres sporløst forsvunnet. Intriguing!

Ps2: Ny bokpakke fra capris.no ligger på postkontoret og venter på meg. Spennende!

Its only defences now, a ring of gorse,
cat snake in strange fruit tangling the land with vine,
its lights diminished like clothes sewn onto the body.

Beyond, the mossy gums
and their barrackyard laughter;
Augustus, chasing gateways that open to the view
and a stone pile.

High pitched calypso exfoliates
my horse, grinning still

when she touched him

nostrils full of sip bush rum.

Is so one day he go build one shack,
something huge enough to blame.

She wrings her hands
against the wind’s shoulder,
his sawdust jaw stitched like river silver

so I think I understand

I found
I glimpse
I disheveled
I listen
I still
I would’ve been
“I’m bleeding all over.”

The land is three-sixty,
splits the sky in two,
and up this hill is a lagoon,
the hail’s pepper shot,
a Methodist spire
and the man who lost his son.

This piece is a mashup of Owen Sheers‘ ‘Y Gaer’ and a passage from Anthony Joseph’s The African Origins of UFOs. Check out Poets on Fire to vote for your favourite mashup!