"The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" Book Review

Initially took me a few tries to get into it, but once I was in, I had to stay up until I finished. Its a book that really makes you feel the sadness and beauty of love and appreciate your loved ones that much more. And yet is quite funny too.

The book unrolls the fictional tale (tied to true events) of a literary group on the island of Guernsey invented by locals to explain breaking curfew one night. Guernsey is a a small island outside England which was occupied by Germans during WWII. The main character, Juliet, is a London based-author searching for a new writing idea. A chance correspondence opens up between her and a man from the Guernsey literary club. A professional and then an increasingly personal connection opens up as she gets drawn into the secrets of this community and an extraordinary woman named Elizabeth Mckenna at the centre of it. The book has a unique format of telling the story through letters written between Juliet, her friends and her publisher.

The book did a great job of showing the different types of desperation which the war created and how the human heart responds to survive.

Once the German army occupied the island, resoures and trade were taken over. Those that harvested livestock, fish, and crops had to supply the occupying army and feed their people second, and everyone was having to come up with resourceful ways to get food in their belly. The inhabitants of the island would guard their gardens at night, not only from sneaking soldiers or neighbours, but against the forced labourers from Europe who had been brought over in the thousands. These people were barely fed by the German forces and essentially lived off what they could forage when released in the evenings.

A teenage boy, Lud, from the camps attempts to get into a garden one night and is discovered. The man whose garden he is in , Peter, takes him in (a crime punishable by prison camp), and enlists Elizabeth to help the very sick boy. They are snitched on by a neighbour, and she is sent to a prison camp where she ultimately dies. This kind of situation highlights the plight that humans found themselves in during the war. Everyone was being stressed, yet all to different degrees and ways. Peter had been ready with pots and pans to alert neighbours and drive away anyone who came looking to steal, and yet faced with the state of the boy his human sympathy could not help but want to help him. Same with Elizabeth.

We see time and time again the she acts immediately to help those around her without thought of repercussions to her own self. As one of her friends puts it, through the war she never lost her spirit, “she just saw one cruelty too many” . Her community agrees, it would have been better for her to be less kind, but not so good for those people around her.

About two thirds in we find Elizabeth gave birth to a child, Kit, with a German soldier named Christian. At first this seems very out of character for her, and yet we learn that even this man, ostensibly of the enemyt, was a good-hearted man whose goal was to ”marry Elizabeth, raise freesias, read, and forget about war”. In an age where war and imprisonment was conducted so much more by individuals rather than machines as is the case nowadays, these strange interactions would happen from sharing living space. Sometimes German trucks would push off fruits or lumps of coal for the children on the streets to take home. Many of the girls in town would date the Germans and some islanders looked down on them for it, but for many it was a way to bring home basics that had become luxuries; access to new clothes with were so hard to get, food smuggled from parties to feed their families the next day.

Another hard choice many of the islanders had to make, was whether or not to send their children to England and comparative safety once they were invaded, or to keep them in a home that was now occupied land. In order to get away in time, this decision had to be made within 24 hours, and yet lived with for five years. By this time so many husbands, brothers, uncles etc were already missing from home, having to make these decisions whether to further separate had to be extremely difficult. The island was cut off from radio and sometimes mail, families did not know where their children were sent and had only a letter or two as their kids grew through their childhood in households far away. One day two islanders hear the BBC coming through the German forces radio, and rejoice because they had wondered if London had been entirely demolished. This situation highlights how much isolation they were living in and how peoples emotions were really stretched to the limits to make it through these times.

Despite the tragic notes, the book is warm, funny, and not hard to read. Juliet’s independence and the warmth of the Guernsey literary club community make for humorous and endearing events. There is the butler whose lord escaped off Guernsey just before the occupation—leaving his entire wine cellar… The butler decides to impersonate his employer and live a life of leisure. The German army realising he does not belong is delayed by Elizabeth painting a portrait of him in historic clothing. When the Germans come they find him sipping wine sitting below a portrait of an “ancestor” he bears an uncanny resemblance to. Kind and intelligent women abound in this book, There is the good Mr. Fossey who see the lady he is courting favours poetic men. He joins the literary group to learn poetry, and puts his own earthy spin on some poetry to suit their date. Isola with her claustraphobic parrot. Not since Anne of Green Gables have I felt so cozy in a fictional community, the story is full of good men and personable women in a beautiful setting.

Its an enthralling, unique book that makes you smile and even laugh, forces you to reflect on how humanity survives under duress , and will leave you feeling superior for knowing about a small piece of history most don’t!

I dont know why I rush to finish books Im enjoying, theyre done that much faster😔. Theres so much more to this book I didnt even hint at but I dont want to go on forever. Do you think you'll read it? What are you currently enjoying?