The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - review by Katherine Roberts
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| The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society |
When London author Juliet is invited to speak at a book club that was formed on Guernsey during the German Occupation of the island, she discovers rather more than a cosy group of book lovers hoping to hear her read. For the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is hiding a secret from its war years that draws her deeper into the lives of pig farmer Dawsey and the little girl he is raising as his own.
This 2008 historical novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece Annie Barrows is fictional, but might easily have been a true story. It was made into a film in 2018, which I caught up with on TV. In a series of flashbacks, the film brings Guernsey's occupation to life, starting with the evacuation of their children to England days before the German army arrived on the island, and the various ways the islanders co-operated (or did not co-operate) with the invaders.
The Germans occupied Guernsey in 1940. They immediately went about turning the island into a fortress with physical defences and barriers, demanded the islanders hand over their radios, and effectively isolated the population from the outside world, as well as - with the introduction of curfews - from each other. It was effectively a lockdown that also took away people's only method of communication. Imagine the past two years without Zoom? Then extend that nightmare to five years, separated from your children and with no news of them. But, as we've learned from the past two years, the stricter the lockdown, the more desperate people are to break them. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was born as an on-the-spot excuse when a group of islanders (who had illegally roasted a pig they'd hidden from the Germans) were caught after curfew coming home a little drunk from the resulting dinner party. The following day, it was added to the German list of authorised societies, meaning that the islanders had to continue meeting as a book club.
This provided a welcome antidote to the isolation people were experiencing, and books - as we know - have a life of their own, drawing together people who might never otherwise meet. So Dawsey finds Juliet's address in the front of a book in their collection and invites her to the island to read from her work, along with a good helping of potato peel pie washed down by another member's homemade gin.
Never heard of potato peel pie? Here's a wartime recipe for you to try:
The gin recipe I'll leave up to you!
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Katherine Roberts writes fantasy and historical fiction for young readers, and once cycled around Guernsey in a day.
Comments
in war, personal tragedy and an unlikely love story. There's a film of it now, with an implausibly suave and handsome pig farmer, but the book, as usual, has more depth and interest.