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

A book written by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. My very first epistolary novel. It’s a book in the form of letters. This was the reason why I got interested in the book, other than by it’s unique and intriguing title.

Juliet Ashton, a columnist turned book author received a letter from a stranger, Dawsey Adams, a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.This is where everything started. At first, she only knew the members through mail. They were sharing stories of their lives during the German Occupation and told how their club got started and how it got it’s name. She got intrigued and interested of the group and decided to make them the center story of her new book.Until Juliet decided to meet them in person and went to Guernsey for a visit. She never expected that that visit would change everything. And she never left.

Quotes:

‘That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive–all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.’

‘I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers–booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one–the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it–along with first dibs on the new books.’

‘Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person’s name suddenly pops up everywhere you go?

‘Every biography should be written within a generation of it’s subject’s life, while he or she is still in living memory.

This book will surely make you wanna start a book club! I know I did.