The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society / Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Guernsey, a Channel Island located closer to France than England, was occupied by Nazis during WWII, the only English territory to suffer German occupation. The novel records the stories surrounding a somewhat quirky group of islanders who created a literary society as a pretense to give them an alibi for breaking the occupation-imposed curfew. The literary society takes on a life of its own, all the more so when a London-based journalist joins their circle, first from afar and then in person, and is smitten with island life.

The book is told almost entirely through letters, a device which might seem clever at first, but is stretched thin and I thought it grew tiresome in some parts. Apparently multiple daily postal deliveries did make it possible to maintain back-and-forth communication almost as if it were as instantaneous as email, even in 1946, at least in London and larger cities. But sometimes it isn’t successful in propelling the plot forward.

I can see why this novel had such a cult following with book clubs. Books are held in high regard. Have a look at these quotes:

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 geometrically progressive—all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment. page 9

Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books. page 34

The characters in this novel are as colorful as they come. It’s sort of an ensemble cast, reminiscent of a PBS series like Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford. One wonders when it will be translated to film. It’s probably just a matter of time.

Comments

And the Mountains Echoed / Khaled Hosseini

The latest book by the author of The Kite Runner reads like a collection of short stories, but they are all interconnected. The link between stories isn’t always immediately apparent and there are some diversions that take the reader far from Kabul, and sometimes confusingly so (the detour to Greece was interesting, but a bit disconnected from the rest of the storyline, I thought). There were some great narratives—one in particular that I think was worth the whole of the book— a story about Afghani-American cousins, Idris and Timur, who return to Kabul to attempt to regain an ancestral home, abandoned after the Soviet invasion. While Timur goes out and carouses and flaunts his American wealth, Idris spends most of his time showing charity to a young girl in hospital, a victim of an unspeakable act of violence which leaves her in need of surgery in a western nation. Idris, himself a doctor, promises to arrange the needed medical intervention, but when he returns to the US, the...

Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

The Silent Patient / Alex Michaelides

A woman viciously murders her seemingly doting husband. We meet up with her several years later in a mental facility, where a therapist tries to get her to speak and to reveal her story. Who is innocent and who is the victim? The answer isn’t straightforward. The resolution to the novel features a real twist that will have the reader questioning the chronology of the different narrative threads in the book. A real page-turner.

Peachy Reads

Search This Blog