The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 278 pages

Reviewed by: Willow Locksley

“…I came to see that Mr. Dickens and Mr. Wordsworth were thinking of men like me when they wrote their words. But most of all, I believe that William Shakespeare was. Mind you, I cannot always make sense of what he says, but it will come.

…Do you know what sentence of his I admire the most? It is ‘The bright day is done, and we are for the dark.’

I wish I’d known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, plane-load after plane-load of them. …If I could have thought the words, ‘the bright day is done and we are for the dark,’ I’d have been consoled somehow and ready to go out and contend with circumstances—instead of my heart sinking to my shoes.”

Beyond its intriguing title, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is the straightforward story of a community living through and recovering from the trials of war. It’s 1946, and post-World War II society is taking a hesitant step forward. Miss Juliet Ashton is a London writer in search of a new muse. Dawsey Adams is a farmer on Guernsey, an English Channel island occupied by Nazis during the war. He writes to Juliet after reading a book that once belonged to her. He explains how he came across it secondhand and found her name and address written inside the cover. Stores are just beginning to reopen on Guernsey, and the bookstore is gone—he wonders if she’d be so kind as to connect him to a bookseller in London, from whom he can order more books. Thus begins their friendship.

The story is told in letter form, as Juliet and her London friends correspond with the members of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (a group originally formed as an excuse to meet after the Nazi-imposed curfew and share out whatever food the islanders managed to keep for themselves). Numerous names were difficult to keep track of in the beginning, but the authors succeed in attaching unique personalities and styles of expression to each character. Slowly, their sometimes humorous, sometimes horrifying accounts of life during the German occupation unfold, providing Juliet with the material she needs to begin another book. In exchange, she provides the islanders with news of the outside world and the attention they crave after their isolation. Underlying all is a lively study of literature’s survival value in times of struggle.

Balancing the heartbreaking aspects of the story are elements of charm and wry humor. Unfortunately, these include a few stabs at Christianity and moral behavior. The only character with an obviously Christian worldview is a prying, prim and proper woman held in scorn by the rest of the characters. A palm-reading, potion-brewing woman is loved by all. A male character, and possible contender for Juliet’s affections, takes himself out of the running by announcing that he is homosexual. These instances added little to the plot; and while that is regrettable from a story-crafting standpoint, it also means they didn’t feature prominently enough to completely derail the story for me as a Christian reader.

This book touches on so many aspects of the war and human experience, it was difficult to decide what to highlight in this review. It’s an easy read wherein themes of love, friendship, bravery, and compassion run deep. Despite a peppering of feminism, liberalism and religious cynicism, the end result is a heavy dose of perspective. Our modern concerns appear lightweight when compared to the Nazi threat of the last century, which gave new meaning and importance to the simplest of things, be it a bar of soap, your neighbor’s pig, or that book you’ve been reading. This is a well-executed and memorable work of historical fiction.