The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, 2008
distinctions
~New York Times Bestseller, fiction, 2008
~Time Magazine's Best Books of the Year, #7, fiction, 2008
~Indies Book of the Year, adult fiction, 2009
first words
“Dear Sidney, Susan Scott is a wonder. We sold over forty copies of the book, which was very pleasant, but much more thrilling from my standpoint was the food.”
the premise
In post-WWII London, an author on the hunt for a new book idea begins a serendipitous correspondence with friendly strangers on the island of Guernsey and learns about their hardships and triumphs during the German occupation of their island. Along the way she discovers truths about herself.
my thoughts
It's always a good sign when I read the last page of a book and am sad because it's over. It's also good when I have the impulse to go back to page one and read it all over again right then. This book, as so many others have pegged it, is indeed charming. It's warm, tender, witty, heartbreaking and satisfying (except for how it leaves you wanting more). It's a book written by booklovers about booklovers for booklovers, and as such succeeds marvelously, dropping delightful allusions at every turn and suggesting much about the power of good literature in our lives, as individuals and as a society. That in itself makes this book a winner.
Few books are perfect. This one has its weaknesses, spots I felt were a little too gimmicky or stereotyping. For example, the "bad guys" in the novel were all pretty flat, and I'm not talking about the Germans. They were done very well. I'm talking about the pinched, self-righteous "Christian" townswoman; the tall, arrogant, wealthy American; and the sleazy sneaky tabloid writer. It disappointed me to find such plot puppets poking out among all the wonderfully vivid and real characters populating the pages. They did provide their share of comic relief though, I suppose. As for my accusation of "gimmicky," I can't really touch on that without spoiling a few plot points, so email me if you're curious, but let me just say that the plot is not what kept me turning the pages.
One of the greatest strengths of this novel is its disarming deployment of irony. The format is key here; the novel is composed entirely of letters and telegrams sent between the characters, so the reader is given glimpses of each character from various vantage points, allowing those characters to develop complexity in a way that feels natural (and allows for lots of irony).
The interchange of letters and the various voices that emerge from the pages also provide fascinating historical details about the German occupation of the Channel Islands without ever slipping into a history lecture. The characters simply share their experiences and feelings about what transpired, and the concrete details they include make it all so real and so heart-breaking. This novel successfully weds laugh-out-loud humor with the gravity of war-time atrocities in a way that calls to mind the Italian film Life is Beautiful. Like the film, it is true to human nature, and like the film, this book is not to be missed.
others’ thoughts
Book Nut
Dragonflowers and Books
Dragonflowers and Books (Again!) includes some great quotes
Dreadlock Girl
Library Queue
My Thoughts Exactly
The Book Nest
The Golden Road to Samarqand
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