Voices: 'Potato Peel Pie Society' Enchants With Sweet Letters

I picked up Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society on a recommendation from my grandmother, a witty and well-read lady herself. “It’s an epistolary novel, so it’s written entirely in letter form,” she explained. “And it really is the loveliest novel I’ve read in a while. The thing is, it’s all about books—reading books, writing books, loving books.”

Naturally, I couldn’t resist this endorsement. The book truly is a tale of reading, friendship, and romance. It is set in a broken England, post-World War II, suffered more than the Channel Islands, including the Isle of Guernsey, the inhabitants of which were starved and occupied by German soldiers for years. When one of writer Juliet Ashton’s used books, Selected Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb, falls into the hands of a founding member of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, letters begin flying over the English Channel and life-altering friendships are written with the ink. These friendships initially are based on a love of books—Charles Lamb, Seneca, Jane Austen, and the sisters Brontë are among the Society’s most beloved authors—but go on to face even more powerful issues: loss, heartache, the horrors of wartime. It is touching to watch Juliet find such kindred spirits in Guernsey’s Society through a series of letters, and downright uplifting to learn how the Society found solace in each other and in literature during the hell that was the Occupation.

Juliet Ashton is a heroine of the best kind, a protagonist to fall in love with. She is brilliant, feisty, funny, loyal, and a truly kind friend. She is also prone to flashes of rage, such as throwing a teapot at a reporter who made uncouth insinuations about her dead fiancé. By no means is she perfect, but she’s the sort of woman I’d love to take out for coffee—or cocktails.

(Actually, as a side note, I believe that my fondness for Juliet is partly due to the resemblance she bears to a heroine I adored in my formative years, one Miss Betsy Ray of Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy books. Both are smart, fun-loving writers who thrive on friendship, write diligently to pen-pals, and have questionable culinary abilities.)

The epistolary quality of the novel both charmed and impressed me. Charmed, because I am an inveterate letter writer myself, and if I could, I would pen all my correspondences by hand on violet-scented stationery. And impressed, because I know it is not easy to write an epistolary novel well. So much of story-telling involves showing as opposed to telling (the mantra of creative writing teachers everywhere), and people tend to tell rather than show when they write letters. But somehow, Shaffer and Barrows’ novel is both vivid and genuine, with highly distinctive voices, seamless pacing, and masterful building of suspense. Not once did I feel as though I was reading an epistolary novel written by two women in 2008. The whole way through, I felt as though I was really reading a long series of correspondences, as though I was privileged enough to be let into the secrets of these people’s lives.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a light, fast-paced, but still very fulfilling read. There are plenty of laughs and, for people like me who have an uncontrollable weeping reflex, maybe a tear or two as well. And be warned: Go buy some stationery before you read the book. If nothing else, it will make you hungry to write a lengthy and loving epistle to a dear old—or brand new—friend.

--Emmaline Silverman