It is a wondrous thing to be part of a club, especially one filled with friends and loved ones who share the same quirky interest or experiences as you. There is a bond there that one cannot get from any other sort of relationship.
For me, this close association has always been through book clubs. To find someone who understand and loves the same book as me is like discovering a kindred spirit.
This is just the sort of group that readers become a member of when reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. In the book, the members are not brought together by their love of books, (that comes later), but by their determination to survive and their shared ‘we’ll show them’ attitude.
The novel is set in 1946 as London emerges from the Second World War. Many London neighbourhoods lie in rubble. Juliet Ashton is a well known author, whose home as been destroyed. She thirsts for a new adventure, a story she can sink her teeth into that will inspire her next book.
This novel, to my absolute delight, is written through a series of correspondences, in the form of letters and telegrams. Unexpectedly, Juliet receives a letter from a man named Dawsey Adams on the island of Guernsey, a farming community, located in the English Channel between France and Britain. Dawsey is a Guernsey native who writes to Juliet for information, seeing as books are so rare on Guernsey, and he would like to gain more – particularly for the island’s book club. Through further correspondence from all the eclectic members of the literary society, Juliet learns that the club brings together a wide variety of islanders who found peace in literature during the horrific German occupation during the war.
Through the multiple perspectives of the members, we learn about how the society came about, how it got its name and how the islanders lived during the war. It is through their enduring friendship, fortitude and solaces in literature and good food, despite rationing, that they were able to forget, if only for a brief period, the darkness of war.
This is a smart delightful novel. It is so vividly written that I kept forgetting that it was a work of fiction populated with such wonderful, welcoming characters that I found myself wishing that I could go to Guernsey and make them my friends and neighbours.
The only negative thing I have to say about this book is that it was too short. I was sad to let these friends go. In the words of Jane Austen, “If a book is well written, I always find it too short.” 4.5/5
