Book Review/The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
By Mary Ann Shaffer
And Annie Barrows
Dial Press A division of Random House Publishers
Hardcover $22
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
Every now and then, a book comes along with an unusual title so intriguing that you have to peek inside and once you have, there is no turning back. “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society,” is definitely that kind of book.
It is about a little known anecdote in the story of World War II and what happened to the people living on Guernsey Island during that war. I was already quite familiar with their story through a BBC drama series called “Enemy at the Door,” I watched on a series of videos I checked out at the Douglas County Library. Admittedly, I was still not prepared for this delightful story written by two bibliophiles, Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece, children’s book writer, Annie Barrows. Unfortunately, Mary Ann died before the book was published.
The story begins in January 1945, a time when Great Britain was still struggling under the shadow of World War II. Writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, Dawsey Adams, who came across her name on the flyleaf of a book written by Charles Lamb. Dawsey is inquiring if Ashton knows of any other books written by Lamb, explaining that he is a founding member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society on the Island of Guernsey, a British possession hugging the coast of France.
Thus begins a remarkable tale of the German occupation of the island during World War II and how a group of Islanders, caught breaking the wartime curfew and facing arrest by their occupiers, outwitted their captors. A character named Elizabeth boldly steps forward and tells a German officer they are members of a literary society and had lost track of time in a book discussion. She invites the officer to attend the next meeting.
Since there was no literary society and therefore no next meeting, this unlikely group had to quickly organize the society and gather up as many books as they could to cover the deception in case the German’s accepted the invitation.
The intriguing potato peel name comes when one of the characters who insists on having dessert at the meeting. There wasn’t much food available during the 1940 to 1945 occupation, so the group made a pie out of potato peels.
In the story line, the inquisitive Juliet continues to write the Islanders and convinces her publisher to let her write a book about the occupation, the literary society and its members. Mary Ann Shaffer, an author, was intrigued about the occupation and flew to the island with a book in mind and got stranded at the airport in dense fog. She spent 72 hours with nothing to do but read books about the occupation. Her story idea came from that experience. Hr book, however, took a different direction entirely when she cleverly develops the story as a series of letters and yet she was able to introduce the reader to 20 separate characters, all individuals speaking in separate voices.
What she is able to bring out in the book, is the powerful magic of reading and how this unlikely society kept from going insane in a time of great peril. Interestingly, the author sheds a different view of the occupiers, some good and decent people who were caught up in a war not of their making. The book is a mix of characters that recreates for the reader a time and place that was more than just a footnote in the history of World War II.
(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)