The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Kindle.

Charming, Eloquent, Moving.

This was a lovely little book. Mary Ann Shaffer (and after she’d fallen ill, her niece Annie Barrows) uniquely composed Guernsey as a series of letters written between characters, focused around protagonist Juliet Ashton in immediately-post World War II London. Juliet had composed a series of humorous articles during the war as a coping mechanism; a distraction from the daily devastation of war and losing her own home to one of the frequent bombings. Once the war ended, Juliet was searching for a topic for a book, for a new purpose as she picked up the pieces of her life. Here entered the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. In a stroke of serendipity, Dawsey Adams, a member of the Society, wrote to Juliet regarding a copy of Charles Lamb’s “Selected Essays of Elia” he’d found with her signature in it. This chance correspondence led to a post-war pen-pal relationship that eventually blossomed into a full-bore friendship between Juliet and the other members of the Society—and a perfect topic for her book.

As the Society members recounted their stories of the German occupation of their island, I was greatly moved by the degree to which these individuals had come together as a family. It was both intriguing and frightening to imagine this bucolic place, seemingly apart from the war on the Continent, being overrun by Nazi soldiers and surviving in a vacuum for five long years. The Society itself was born of survival instinct and sustained through its members’ need for both human interaction and literary distraction.

I loved Juliet and her co-correspondents’ eloquent letters, and reading a book in this style made me long for the lost, bygone art of long-form letters. Though, to be fair, I at some points would have liked the interjection of a narrator to tie the story together. It also appeared that postwar mail delivery was much faster than modern-day, which was a bit perplexing. Nonetheless, this is a book about the written word; of how it has the power to inspire, comfort, anger, embolden, and even save those who read it. I loved learning how a specific book or author had affected each member of the Society, either informing or distracting from their wartime situation. I wasn’t ready for this story to end, and wondered about the ongoing fates of each character once it had.

Beyond the story itself, I loved author Mary Ann Shaffer’s account of her writing experience, along with co-author Annie Barrows’ ode to her late aunt, who passed away shortly after the manuscript for her first published novel was picked up. As Barrows tells it, her aunt Mary had always wanted “to write a book that someone would like enough to publish.” That she became unexpectedly ill just as she’d managed to do so is a sobering inspiration to make the most of the time we’re given, for as long as we have it. I am so glad that her dream not only came true, but produced a book that is enjoyed throughout the world.

Favorite Quotation: “I can’t think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can’t talk to, or worse, someone I can’t be silent with.”

Bonus Quotation (from the author’s Acknowledgements): “I hope, too, that my book will illuminate my belief that love of art—be it poetry, storytelling, painting, sculpture, or music—enables people to transcend any barrier man has yet devised.