Deb­bie Ja­cob

On the sur­face, The Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to Peel Pie So­ci­ety by Mary Ann Shaf­fer and An­nie Bar­rows seems to be a light, pleas­ant, even hu­mor­ous read. If you read be­tween the lines, how­ev­er, you'll find many sub­tle, se­ri­ous mes­sages about the mean­ing of life to ex­plore in our Sun­day Arts Sec­tion (SAS) Book Club choice for Feb­ru­ary.

Set in 1946, just af­ter World War II, this his­tor­i­cal nov­el con­sists of let­ters to and from Juli­et Ash­ton, a writer in need of a new, more mean­ing­ful sub­ject for her next book. Juli­et writes let­ters to her pub­lish­er, her suit­or and even­tu­al­ly Adam Dawsey, a pig farmer from Guernsey, one of the British Chan­nel Is­lands oc­cu­pied by the Nazis dur­ing World War II.

Adam dis­cov­ers Juli­et's ad­dress in­side of a sec­ond-hand copy of Charles Lamb's es­says, a book Juli­et just hap­pened to part with be­cause she need­ed more room on her book­shelf.

When Juli­et replies out of cu­rios­i­ty to Adam's let­ter, a whole se­ries of ques­tions crop up re­veal­ing the pur­pose of The Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to Peel Pie So­ci­ety, a book club in­vent­ed on the spur of the mo­ment by Eliz­a­beth McKen­na when she and her friends need­ed a quick ex­cuse to avoid trou­ble. A book club was the per­fect al­i­bi for the res­i­dents of Guernsey caught af­ter cur­few by a Nazi pa­trol.

Each let­ter in Shaf­fer and Bar­row's book of­fers a re­mark­able glimpse about the Guernsey res­i­dents' lives dur­ing the oc­cu­pa­tion of the is­land. Most of the let­ters re­veal the res­i­dents' spir­it for sur­vival dur­ing those tough and fright­en­ing days when many of the is­land's res­i­dents were shipped off to Ger­many.

As let­ters are ex­changed, the res­i­dents of Guernsey and Juli­et al­so de­vel­op a bond through the books they read. As Juli­et writes in one let­ter: "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 all geo­met­ri­cal­ly pro­gres­sive–all with no end in sight, and for no oth­er rea­son than sheer en­joy­ment."

The Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to Peel Pie So­ci­ety is the sto­ry about how a tiny British is­land came back to life af­ter be­ing iso­lat­ed from the world for five years. It's a book about sur­viv­ing war and oc­cu­pa­tion and ap­pre­ci­at­ing the lit­tle things in life we all take for grant­ed–in­clud­ing shoes and food. The Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to Peel Pie So­ci­ety shows how books help us to sur­vive the tough times. Books are a form of es­cape for the res­i­dents of Guernsey, but they are al­so the force that binds every­one to­geth­er in their strug­gle to main­tain some sem­blance of in­de­pen­dence af­ter they are iso­lat­ed from their coun­try and the world.

Check out this re­view of The Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to peel Pie So­ci­ety from the UK Guardian:http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/09/fic­tion4

Join us in the SAS Book Club group on Face­book to dis­cuss The Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to Peel Pie So­ci­ety.