Book Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us.”


How about a book review to break-up all of my cathartic purging of my apartment?


One of the lab assistants (actually micro's lab assistant) and work recommended this book.  He told me to read it, and then whenever he came into the main lab and I was reading something else, he would say, "I told you what to read!"  So, I finally did.  Apparently, I also remind him of the main character.

Juliet Ashton is a writer in London in 1946.  Through letters, she eventually becomes acquainted with the members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society--a society formed to keep the people of Guernsey emotionally going while the British island of Guernsey underwent Nazi occupation.  As Juliet comes to know the people of the society, and the spirit of the island, she has to make a choice about what she wants from her own life. 

Anyways, I really enjoyed this book.  Honestly.  I think what I liked about it was just how quaint it was.  It had a definite Anne of Green Gables feel to it, especially in that it was basically an ode to rural life.  It made me laugh, it made me cry, and it was just such a simple but beautiful investigation into human suffering.

I would recommend it, but it isn't the next big book in Literature.  Five stars, for what it is meant to be.

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