THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY

Synopsis:

Every once in a while I come across a book that I love, a book that I could read again and again, a book that I want everyone I know to read. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is one of those books. By far the best book I read in 2008 (and I read a lot), The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a delightful piece of historical fiction that will make you laugh, cry and remember the transformational power of literature.

Review:

I must confess that the title of this book left me very curious. And I thought, "but who in his sanity will give this name to a book?".
Because usually the books have small and flashy titles. I soon realized that this was a book unlike any other, who wore a title like this to leave the reader curious to see what's behind it, and the synopsis is a real good help.
This book is partly posthumous because the writer was writing before she died and could not finish it. So was her niece who had to finish it, thus becoming co-author of the book. However the writing is fairly uniform and natural it is impossible to notice where an author started and where he ended another, which often happens in similar books, which could affect the quality of the story.
Another peculiarity of this book is that it is written in epistolary form, in the form of letters of the main character Juliet, for the inhabitants of an island near Guernsey Channel called to her friends and her brother. This format allows easy, quick and addictive reading.
This story is set in the period after the Second World War and tells how the inhabitants of the island of Guernsey faced the war with the help of this curious society. Because the book is set in a particularly difficult time it would be expected that the book became sad and heavy. What surprisingly it does not because the book is light and candid and puts in a smile even when talking about matters as serious as those.
This book also makes any lover of literature to identify with the characters in the book, because it is their love of books that allows them to remain united and overcome the most traumatic moments, it is perhaps what makes the characters in this book so palpable and real in the eyes of the reader,
In three words: I loved it!