A friend, who is so kind to regularly follow my diary on these pages, suggested I read this book.
It’s the only novel the author, who died in February 2008, wrote.
Mary Ann Shaffer, an American, became interested in Guernsey while visiting London in 1976.
Guernsey is one of the so called “Channel Islands”; although it’s geographically much closer to France than the UK, it is loyal to the British crown. This loyalty can be traced back to Norman times when the Channel Islands first became part of the English realm and forms the basis of the island’s constitution.
Many years later she wrote this delightful little epistolary novel.
The plot is set in January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject.
She will find it in a letter from a man she's never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb.
As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends, a wonderfully eccentric world.
Born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
I liked this humorous and moving book and I hope you’ll enjoy it as well.
Many thanks to Katherine, who gave me this pleasant literary suggestion.