SWC Reads: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Someone recommended this book to me back when I was in college. I promptly bought a copy and preceded to never read it. It was in my Goodreads as having been on my Want to Read list since 2013. Some years later my mother had asked for a list of books to recommend to my grandmother that I thought she might like. I pulled this off the shelf and told Mom to give it to her first and we’d start there. I still hadn’t read it myself.

Now, when I’ve finally picked it up I have a thank you note from my eternally classy (and now 100 years old) grandmother, appreciating such a thoughtful recommendation and the loaning of a book from my own library.

Grandma is right, and so was the woman at the gym who originally recommended it to me. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is one of the most delightful books I’ve had the pleasure to read in a very long time.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that books find you exactly when you’re meant to read them. Which is probably why, the week my company announced lay offs, before we were actually out of work, this was the precise book that called to me from my shelf; demanding to be read. Wasting away on the sofa in my covid-19 induced funemployment I’m reading about the English taking to bomb shelters during the Blitz, islands being held captive by Nazi forces, the brutal mistreatment of prisoners of war and realizing that sheltering in place really isn’t so bad. And that while I will miss each and every one of my dearly beloved coworkers to no end, I have a near guarantee of seeing them all again. (In fact, we’ve already set up weekly zoom happy hours for the rest of the summer).

But back to this wonderful book…

The story is told through the incredibly creative and descriptive letters being sent between a popular columnist, and author, Juliet Ashton, and the friends and colleagues she writes to.

After receiving a letter from the tiny Channel island of Guernsey, from a reader who happened upon a book she once owned, Juliet becomes entranced by the island, it’s inhabitants, and everything they went through during their occupation by the German forces who had taken over the island during the second world war. The book takes it’s name from the literary society that a small troupe of unlikely friends began during the German occupation and continued on once they had reclaimed their island after the war.

The book is split into two parts, the first when Juliet is in London and corresponding with the people of Guernsey, and the second part when she travels to Guernsey in hopes of writing a book about their experiences during the occupation and she, and her friends, are corresponding with Juliet’s friends back in London.

Rarely have I ever connected to so many characters in a single book. This may stem from the fact that each character has a moment to write about their favorite author, books, and general literary topics, (which anyone in my life will tell you automatically endears you to me forever) but it could also be the stories each character slowly unravels about their own unique experience during the war. The mere idea that suffering takes such a vast number of forms. Every shape and size of void can be filled with both sadness and joy, perseverance and love, until you’re full up of experience before you know it, with just a little room for more, the same way we always seem to find room for dessert.