Monday, September 29, 2008

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society


My agent loaned me The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and I'm very glad she did. It's been a while since I've enjoyed a book this much and on so many levels -- as a reader, a writer, a lover of books and of history. It has a bit of everything -- humor, well-placed historical detail, heart-rending poignancy that evokes, for me, the same kind of feeling that reading The Spoon River Anthology does -- there's even a romance. All of these elements are presented in back and forth letters among exceptionally well-drawn, living and breathing characters, both admirable and unworthy.

Several years ago PBS's Masterpiece Theater aired a series called Island at War, which also dealt with the WW II German occupation of one of the Channel Islands, in this case a fictional one. Having seen that lent a great deal of visual "texture" to the reading of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

I highly recommend that you experience both.

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