The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - by Mary Ann Shaffer - while on holidays. It's a quick read - those with a bit of time could knock it off in half a day. I arrived at my inlaws with nothing to read (oh no!), but luckily, my mother-in-law the school librarian had this book on hand - she had to review it to see how appropriate it was for her school library.

I loved this book. It made me giggle, and it made me cry. It transported me to a different time and place I hadn't thought of (post-war England, and War time in the Channel Islands. I seem to be a sucker for WW2 stuff - fiction or non-fiction, Pacific or Europe. Don't know why - not the most uplifting of topics, I know.

Basically, it's about a writer who has a war time column in a London paper, who has had these published as a book, and is now struggling to find a topic for her second book. By chance, she is written to by someone on Guernsey, who has come across a second-hand book that has her address written inside the cover, and given Guernsey has no book shops, the gentleman asks her to find a book about the author of this book, as he is interested in finding out more.

This kicks off a correspondence between him and her, and soon a community of people on Guernsey, who had formed a literary society during German occupation. There are also letters back and forth between her, her editor and her best friend.

Highly recommended.