The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Grade : A-

When I went to the bookstore recently, the manager approached me with a gleam in her eye and told me I had to read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, that every bookseller there had read it and they all loved it. So I did and I’d like to thank her for recommending this charming gem of a book.

The story takes place in England, after World War II when things are still grim and unsettled. During the war, Juliet Ashton wrote a series of humorous magazine articles under the name of Izzy Bickerstaff. The articles have been collected into a book titled Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War and it's proving very popular, but Juliet is tired of light work and wants to write something more substantial. The Times Literary Supplement wants her to write an article about “The Philosophical Value of Reading”, but Juliet is finding it hard to get a hook to start the article. Then one day, out of the blue she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a farmer from the Isle of Guernsey.

Dawsey found Juliet’s name and address in a copy of Charles Lamb’s book Collected Essays of Elia and writes to ask her for the address of a London bookshop: "Charles Lamb made me laugh during the German Occupation, especially when he wrote about the roast pig. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society came into being because of a roast pig we had to keep secret from the German soldiers." Well, wouldn’t you reply to a letter like that? Juliet does and Dawsey tells her about the strict rationing and curfews the German occupiers enforced, and how the islanders were often very hungry. When a woman managed to hide a pig from the Germans, she invited some of her friends to a secret pig roast. As they were leaving, a group of Germans asked what they were doing out after curfew and one of them, Elizabeth McKenna, said they were at a meeting of a literary society. When one of the German officers remarked that he wanted to join, they had to form a literary society for real.

Intrigued, Juliet begins to correspond with some of the members of the society and soon is happily awash in letters. One man writes to tell her how reading Seneca keeps him sober. A farmer who loves poetry expresses his indignation that William Butler Yeats kept the war poets out of the Oxford Book of Modern Verse, (”what makes that man think he’s a poet"?), and a woman writes to compliment Juliet on her book about Anne Brontë – surprising Juliet since that book never sold well. All the letters mention Elizabeth McKenna, the founder of the literary society and it looks like Elizabeth may be the hook for the article Juliet wants to write. Juliet is so enthralled by the letters from the Guernsey folk that she eventually goes to the island, leaving Mark Reynolds, the dashing American publisher who wants to marry her. In Guernsey, Juliet finds herself falling in love with Kit, Elizabeth’s child by a German soldier, a good man who was killed in the war. Elizabeth was sent to a prison camp so Dawsey is raising Kit and as time goes by, it’s clear that Kit isn’t the only person on Guernsey with whom Juliet has fallen in love.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a love letter to books and reading. Yes, there is a romance between Dawsey and Juliet, but it is so muted as to be almost nondescript. The real love affair is the one that develops between the members of the society and the books they read. Under extreme privation and uncertainty, the members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society all discover the consolation and universal truths that great literature can bring, no matter how trying the circumstances. I was happily engrossed in this book and read it straight through. I know that I will read it over and over again – this is a comfort read like no other.

Buy it at Amazon/iBooks/Barnes and Noble/Kobo

Reviewed by Ellen Micheletti
Grade : A-
Book Type: Fiction

Sensuality: Kisses

Review Date : June 2, 2009

Publication Date: 08/2008

Review Tags: World War II

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Ellen Micheletti

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