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

An epistolary tale? What a novel idea. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) The format seems quaint and brings back unwelcome memories of college and slogging through Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos (but I like the movies versions Dangerous Liaisons and Valmont), La Nouvelle Héloïse by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and (shudder) Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. I heard recently that there was an epistolary novel not of letters but text messages. I can’t even begin to fathom it. I inevitably think at the end of such stories of how much more engaging they might have been if they were told in a simple narrative. So too with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It feels old-fashioned. That can often be a good trait, but here I think it merely shows the slightness of the story. It is the story of a writer who, post World War II comes to the island of Guernsey, which had been occupied by German soldiers throughout the war. This part was interesting to me. I had no idea that this had happened and wondered at the conditions that the residents must have lived under. This book only scratches at the surface of it. Instead, it focuses on an intrepid group who manage, by accident, to form a literary society, one where, as luck would have it, every member, no matter their station or education or ability, manages to find the perfect book not just to enrich their lives but to see them through the war. Oh and there’s a rather predictable love story thrown in for good measure. There is the laundry list of stock characters: the sympathetic gay man; the understanding German officer; the selfless and brave islander ready to sacrifice herself for others; the orphaned, precocious child; the quiet, brooding hero; the rich American; and Oscar Wilde. No kidding. I read it in about a day and half, so there is not much time commitment to give to it or to rue having wasted at the end of it.