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Sat 05 May 2007The war in the valleysFictionIt is well travelled territory; the story of the hapless maiden soon to become a maid no more. Admittedly Esther Evans, one of the several unusually passive central characters in Peter Ho Davies's gentle and extensively researched first novel, with its ambiance of an earlier time, is a capable 17-year-old, native Welsh-speaking girl who also speaks English, works in the local pub and keeps house for her widower father.Yet again, here is a British writer drawing on the legacy of the second World War. The girl's story is sympathetic, if predictable. The strength of her tale is in the telling, particularly the atmospheric evocation of a small Welsh community in which the war becomes part of daily life in the shape of German prisoners of war held in a nearby camp.