The Guernsey Literary Society and Potato Peel Pie Club

Mary Ann Shaffer
Annie Barrows
2008
The Trust Estate of Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows



No sooner then I finished Every Man Dies Alone when I was obliged to jump into my book club book : The Guernsey Literary Society and Potato Peel Pie Club. I have a small and narrow mind so my natural inclination would have been to avoid this book. It is Chick Lit. It is Mass Marketed Lit. It is Book Club Lit. But thank SOAPE that even a mind matched only in narrowness by my coronary arteries, was expanded by the muses of my book club.

Guernsey Literary Society and Potato Peel Pie Club takes place in the aftermath of World War II. Somewhere in my brain I was dimly aware that the Channel Islands that belonged to the British were occupied by the Germans during the war. The book is a work of fiction in the form of correspondence (snail mail we call it today) from a author Juliet Ashton to her publisher, her “old” friends and “new” friends that she makes on Guernsey. The wartime occupation is recounted in the letters and this ranges from the funny (how the Guernsey Literary Society and Potato Peel Pie Club was formed to the tragic (the desperation of a Polish slave worker that leads to horrendous consequences to those that showed mercy on him)

The same thoughts that I had while reading Every Man Dies Alone sprung into to my mind. Would I be an informer to attain favour from my occupiers? Would put my money on the Germans being there forever so I should back the winning side? Would I hide my extra rations? Or would I risk all to stand up for truth and the right thing? I don’t know and I am too much of a coward to want to find out.

Every Man Dies Alone gets more intense with the turning of every page; there is no rest, no lightness, the descent accelerates and there is no turning back. Even ceasing the read would leave a hole in you. The Guernsey book is more like being in water that is too deep at times for your comfort level but sandbars let you take a break and enjoy the ocean. And there is a cabana on the beach.

The most incredible part of the book for me: Mail that is posted in London on a given day gets there to your London recipient the same day and you receive the answer later the same day. Now that really must have been the authours’ imaginations gone wild!