I recently read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society for my book club and really liked it. In fact, I breezed through it in just a couple of days. In addition to the whole story being told through letters, it's a fun story that introduced me to a place I'd never heard of: a small island called Guernsey. Located in the English Channel and defended by the UK, Guernsey is is not officially part of the United Kingdom or the European Union.
The book provided a glimpse into life on Guernsey during and immediately following the war. It showed a small community that struggled through Nazi occupation and how they rebuilt their life once it ended. A few things that really struck me:
- I've always lived in a time were communication was instant. Even before the Internet became as prevalent as it is, everyone had phones and could call friends and family for an affordable price. And now that the Internet and cell phones are even more common, it's extremely easy to share details of your life with friends, see new baby pictures, video chat, etc. Although I know communication wasn't always as readily available as it is now, it's hard for me to imagine what it was like for the only affordable communication to take days or weeks to reach it's intended recipient.
- I take the accessibility of books for granted. The main character of this book is a writer, and she talks about how cherished some of her books are. Yes, I have a few favorites I like to be able to pick up and read whenever I want that I like to keep close, but I don't thirst for books the same way some of the characters do. If I want to read a book, I check the library, a local book store or Amazon. Getting my hands on a new book is never a challenge; if anything it's making time to actually read the book that is more difficult.
- Small communities are very intertwined. I've never lived in a community where everyone knows each other's business. In fact, the closest experience I've had to a small town feel was college, and even there it was a big enough student body that only a percentage of people knew who you were and what was going on. I can't imagine what it's like to live in an area where everyone knows everyone, and then to go through an experience like WWII - which actually brought several characters that didn't really know each other well much closer together in the book.
Have you read the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society? Did anything in particular stand out to you?
