The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

by Mary Ann Shaffer

Ebook, 2009

Library's review

I found the epistolary style to be well-suited to the plot, and each of the characters came across as quite distinct and very likable (well, except for Guernsey society maven Miss Adelaide Addison and the disapproving London fire warden Bella Taunton). And I learned an awful lot I never knew about

the Channel Islands. I had no idea they were occupied by the Germans during World War II. Shaffer did a wonderful job of illuminating the hardships the occupation placed on the citizens of Guernsey without losing her deft touch with the more lighthearted aspects of the narrative.

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Genres

Collection

Read but unowned

Description

As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey--a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.

Media reviews

San Francisco Chronicle

"The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society," written by the late Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece, children's author Annie Barrows, stays within modest bounds, but is successful in ways many novels are not. This book won't change your life, but it will probably enchant you. And sometimes

that's precisely what makes fiction worthwhile.

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The Guardian

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society commemorates beautiful spirits who pass through our midst and hunker undercover through brutal times. Shaffer's Guernsey characters step from the past radiant with eccentricity and kindly humour, a comic version of the state of grace. They are

innocents who have seen and suffered, without allowing evil to penetrate the rind of decency that guards their humanity.

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The Washington Post

You could be skeptical about the novel's improbabilities and its sanitized portrait of book clubs (doesn't anyone read trashy thrillers?), but you'd be missing the point. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a sweet, sentimental paean to books and those who love them.