The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ~ Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society is written entirely in letters. There are many different voices, and you have to piece the story together using several different people’s accounts of events. Each personality is so different. It really does seem as if several different people are telling the story.

Juliet is a writer who lives in London. She wrote a newspaper column under the name “Izzy Bickerstaff” during World War II, which has just ended. Juliet’s articles have been made into a book. The book is fairly successful, so she is doing a book tour and looking for something new to write a book about. A man named Dawsey from the English island, Guernsey writes to Juliet because he found her name written in a used book that he read and really enjoyed. She writes him back, and a friendship begins. She finds out that he is a part of a literary group in Guernsey.

The book club began during the war when the island of Guernsey was occupied by the Germans. The people of Guernsey were under strict rule. Their children were sent away to the mainland just before the invasion in order to keep them safe from the Germans. They barely had enough to eat and keep themselves clean. The inhabitants of Guernsey also had a curfew imposed on them by the German soliders. One night a group of friends got together to do something against the Germans’ rules, and they are caught out after curfew. They can’t say what they were really doing, so a young woman named Elizabeth comes up with a lie. She says they were all at a meeting of their literature group. The group has to keep meeting to make the lie seem believable. Eventually, the group turns into an actual literary group, and the members find that reading helps them cope with the terrible situation they are all in.

Juliet wants to hear more about Dawsey’s friends and their literary group. The other members of the book club begin to write her letters too. In the letters Juliet learns of life on Guernsey during the occupation. The stories range from humorous to heartbreaking, and many of the stories are quite surprising. The cast of characters is eccentric and very fun to read. There’s Isola, an adorably odd older woman who makes potions and loves Wuthering Heights with a passion. There’s John Booker, a butler who impersonated his aristocrat employer during the war and found a love of acting thereafter. And Adelaide Addison is the nosey, self righteous spinster who hates The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and urges Juliet to stop writing to them at once.

When I first began reading this story I enjoyed the witty humor and the fun, quirky characters. Then, I began to read the stories of the war. I was appalled, but interested to learn the history. When I think of World War II, my mind immediately goes to the Jewish Germans who were sent to concentration camps. I never considered what life would be like for the rest of the citizens in Europe. And I had no idea that the Germans had occupied an English island during the war. However, I didn’t become totally invested in the book until the story of Elizabeth McKenna came about. She is still missing after the war. Her part of the story is somewhat of a mystery, and it really intrigued me. The author named her appropriately because, like Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, I completely fell in love with her. Even though you only read about Elizabeth McKenna in the letters her friends write, she is the heart and soul of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a wonderfully brave and charming character.

This is the kind of story that most people I know would not pick up on their own. I wouldn’t have read it if my mother-in-law hadn’t recommended it to me, and I know she found out about it because someone recommended it to her. Even a few pages into the book I wasn’t totally convinced that I was going to love this book. It crept up on me slowly as I became entranced by the many different characters and their sad stories of the war. By part two, when Juliet visits Guernsey, I was completely hooked and ready to pack up and go to the little island myself! Needless to say, I would recommend this book to most of my friends. If you like history, romance, reading and the little oddities that exist in any group of people, you will mostly likely love this book as much as I did.