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Nov 24, 2011

mp rated it:

Dear Mary Ann Shaffer,

I recently read your book 'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society'. It brough a few questions to my mind.
Juliet writes in one of her letters:
"Dear Sidney,
What an inspired present you sent kit - red satin tap shoes covered with sequins"
Didn't Sidney know what present he had sent?
If you had to resort to sentences like these to speak what you wanted to, didn't you realize that the letter format and your writing More...

40 comments like (93 people liked it)

Jul 29, 2008

Linda rated it:

Several years ago, I worked at an art gallery here in Anchorage. Though I loved the art, I wasn’t much good at selling it. More often than not, I just chatted up the customers, who were from all over the world.

One night, four elderly people wandered in. They told me they were from a tiny island off the coast of southern England called “Guernsey”. I’d never heard of it, so they proudly explained it was the only part of British soil that had been occupied by the Nazis during World More...

13 comments like (215 people liked it)

Jul 27, 2011

Cayenne rated it:

This was one of the lovliest books I have ever read. I have read many books and seen many movies about World War II, but this one was the best. It was so real. I felt like I knew the characters and I wanted to run over to Guernsey to meet them in person. The stories about their experiences were so touching, not just because they were hard, but because the people were so brave. Horrible things happened to them, but I didn't feel traumatized reading about them. I felt uplifted at their endur More...

7 comments like (30 people liked it)

Nov 26, 2008

Beth F. rated it:

Gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush!!! GUSH!!!!! So yes, clearly I loved this book.

I think the only person I wouldn’t recommend this book to is one of those people who only read meaty tomes that might give regular people a brain embolism while they’re trying to make sense of the 17 different layers of subconscious meaning. I’d also hesitate from recommending this book to most men. However, if you have the ability to find joy and delight in the simple pleasures of a feel-good More...

17 comments like (69 people liked it)

Nov 17, 2008

Ruth rated it:

I won an ARC of this book either from the NYer or from the publisher. I forget which, as it's been sitting around for a while.

This epistolary novel is something I should have loved. I generally like novels in letters, it’s almost like peering into lighted windows at night as you pass, sewing the bits of life seen there into a coherent whole.

It’s fun, this book, in its witty comments, sort of the way I wish I could talk all the time. Yet, about halfway through it began to More...

15 comments like (64 people liked it)

Sep 08, 2008

Emma rated it:

Once again I find myself reading ten pages of a book which is meant to be 'great' and wondering why it is just rubbish. I was meant to read this for a book club but it was about as palatable as a potato peel pie so I spat it out uneaten.

Now, I'm sure there are American authors who can write in an authentic British voice (no one springs to mind, and Elizabeth George is terrible at it but at least her plot is not clunky) but Mary Ann Shaffer isn't one of them.

This book has More...

91 comments like (80 people liked it)

Sep 07, 2010

Kelly rated it:

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5 comments like (27 people liked it)

Sep 25, 2008

Laura rated it:

A friend gave this to me with the recommendation, “You’ll LOVE this – it sounds like you!” I assume she meant because the main character is a witty book lover, not because she’s a critical spinster. I don’t dare ask.

At any rate, this is easily one of the most charming books I’ve read in a while. Our heroine, Juliet, spent the war writing light pieces for a women’s magazine, and now she yearns for more substantial material. When she receives a letter from a Guernsey man who has in his More...

0 comments like (31 people liked it)

Dec 09, 2008

La Petite Américaine rated it:

This book is boring, predictable, and pointless. Maybe the kind of thing that charms the sentimental. It's a series of letters in post WWII England between an author facing writers block and an island community who formed a book club during the German occupation. Eventually we meet the characters (who, oddly, have the same voice as the author in their letters) who come to describe one saintly, cliche, full of b.s. woman who held them all together during the occupation, while she manages to slap More...

24 comments like (39 people liked it)

Sep 17, 2009

Shannon rated it:

The Second World War has ended and people across the world are picking up the pieces. It's 1946, January, and Juliet Ashton is on a book tour around England for her recently published collection of humorous columns that had been so popular during the war, Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War. She's not used to being a success and she does tend to throw things at people, but on the upside a very wealthy and attractive man keeps sending her flowers.

A surprise letter from a complete stranger fr More...

30 comments like (22 people liked it)

Oct 07, 2008

Laura rated it:

I just can't say enough about this book. I don't usually like WWII fiction, but this book is making me re-think that. A book for book-lovers, a book for someone who has always wanted to write a book, a book for lovers, for friends, for the historical fiction lover, a book of connection, a book of everything. Just everything. Read this book. You won't be sorry.

12 comments like (16 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2009

Heidi rated it:

I have been wanting to read this for a year. As I will be leading the Book Chat discussion on it in a couple of months, I finally got around to it.

The book was charming and delightful! Absolutely wonderful and one I would like to own a copy of to re-read my favorite parts over and over. Simple yet still quite deep. Full of so many characters and wonderful personalities--I fell in love with so many of them! I could completely relate to Juliet longing to visit Guernsey, and never want More...

5 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2012

Troy rated it:

Did Fielding not put the epistolary novel to the sword in the first half of the eighteenth century? OK, it's probably unfair to blame Shaffer's chosen form - writers like Byatt have made great use of it. The truth is that "The Guernsey blah blah blah" simply isn't a book for a reader like me. Sicklier than molasses, more hackneyed than Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts feel-gooders, plotted with all the finesse of a six year old with aspirations to architecture and a pack of crayons More...

4 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2008

Amy rated it:

I don't do this often, but I am commanding my fellow Good Read Sisters to stop what they are doing, order a pizza for the family and hide yourselves away with this book! You all deserve a treat and if I could I would come run your homes while you read - this book is that good. It's unique - all letters - but please don't be put off by that. On the contrary, Shaffer is able to add an edge of humor with this device...and is she also paying homage to Anne Bronte and the Tenant...? [if you read it y More...

7 comments like (22 people liked it)

Jan 28, 2011

Barbara rated it:

Initially I hesitated whether to read this book. Everyone knows that you should not judge a book by its cover, but that warning should also include "or its title". As I started this work, I viewed the format, correspondence, with suspicion. It did not take much time for me to become spellbound by the unwinding story contained in these wonderful letters!

Rather than dwell on recounting this story, it would be important to state that the authors have adeptly and lovingly devel More...

23 comments like (9 people liked it)

Sep 25, 2009

Rose added it

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10 comments like (11 people liked it)

Oct 28, 2008

Kathryn rated it:

A sweet, charming and beautiful story about friendship, humanity, heart-full-ness and courage. And I have such a special place in my heart for letters-between-friends; and have made some good friends through letter-writing, so the premise of the story is just too-too perfect! The historical aspect was also very interesting; the island of Guernsey was the only place on British soil occupied by the Germans during WWII. Mercifully (to me, anyway) only a few of the letters dealt with some of the m More...

10 comments like (11 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2012

Jess rated it:

I devoured this book! After hearing only good things about this book, I was still a little hesitant because I didn't know whether I would like the letter format of the post-WWII setting. Nevertheless, once I started it, I could not put it down! The letter format really added to the story--it allowed the reader to get to know each of the characters. By the end, I considered the characters dear to me as my own friends. My favorite character, by far, was Juliet. She was quirky and witty, and her hu More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 17, 2009

Alisa rated it:

I'm in favor of:

-pig farmers as romantic leads
-parrots named Zenobia who eat cuckoo clocks
-women who do the asking

I'm not in favor of:

-strong silent types as romantic leads
-adorable children
-parrots getting more page time than goats

13 comments like (59 people liked it)

Nov 23, 2008

Fiona rated it:

I shall start off by saying that this is a lovely, well written and wholly enthralling read. It is overall a happy book, but with the reality of war - tinged with much sadness.

I think it's biggest criticism is that abominable title. It is too long and just too much of a mouthful. When people ask me what I am reading I can't remember the exact title and can't even be bothered to say it. I refer to it as Guernsey and hope people know what I'm talking about.

Just look at the More...

14 comments like (8 people liked it)

Sep 13, 2008

Cyndi rated it:

I am LOVING this and I'm not even done. A must my friends!!!

Okay, so now I finished it and found that I had the hugest smile across my face. Really, I'm not being figurative here.

This is such an uplifting read. I think this is the kind of book that I would want to write; quirky characters, quiet love story, endearing relationships and moments of self discovery. I even realized I want to live in a small town with a gorgeous landscape to lose myself in every night takin More...

3 comments like (8 people liked it)

May 12, 2011

Monique rated it:

Last night, I finally closed my copy of this book with a satisfied smile. There were a lot of things to like about it, and they lingered in my mind as I closed my eyes to sleep.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is, principally, a romance novel. Set sometime in the mid-1940's, after the liberation of Europe from the Nazi occupation, in the little island called Guernsey, which formed part of the Channel Islands in the English Channel nestled between England and France, t More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

May 17, 2011

Elizabeth added it

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7 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 15, 2010

Katie rated it:

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2 comments like (11 people liked it)

May 02, 2010

Annalisa rated it:

I really wanted to like this book more. It's set in post-Nazi-occupation and everyone seems to love it so it seemed a sure thing to me. It started off very promising with fun charming characters and enticing writing. I just loved Juliet's passionate fervor for life and found myself often smiling at her antics. And I loved Adelaide Addison's uppity nose in everything. I was sure I was going to love this.

But then Juliet set off the Guernsey to meet a whole society of quirky individuals More...

3 comments like (12 people liked it)

Feb 07, 2009

Cindy rated it:

I *LOVED* this book.

Writer Juliet Ashton has come through World War II more or less intact, although her flat was destroyed by bombs. But she's doing all right and ready to start a new project. Around then, she starts a correspondence with Dawsey Adams, an inhabitant of the tiny island of Guernsey. They've been cut off from all communication with England for 5 years and are desperate to catch back up to what they've missed.

Soon Juliet (and through her, the reader) finds More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Aug 09, 2008

Maudeen rated it:

I knew right off I would enjoy this book when I read reviews saying it was reminiscent of Helene Hanff’s classic 84 Charing Cross Road, a series of letters between a New York City book lover and a clerk in the London bookstore. A book I loved so much that when in London I sought out its location where only a plaque on a building gives any clue to the former site.

Writer Juliet Ashton is stumped. She has no idea as to the subject of her next book. She is tired of the light-hearted i More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 14, 2008

Cornflower rated it:

This is an utter joy of a book, beautifully judged, witty, lively, almost Mitfordesque at times, sparky, extremely touching, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
In early 1946 the popular writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a Guernsey farmer, who happens to have acquired a book she once owned. So begins an extraordinary correspondence between Juliet and the various members of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society to which the shy but dependable Daws More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 18, 2009

Andy rated it:

I completely echo Sadie on this book. I've been so entrenched in Zombie novels that I sort of forgot what it was like to read something from the living's perspective, and I'm glad I did get back to that. I really like epistolary novels. In fact, I do believe that I wrote a paper in college about the effects and wonder of the epistolary novel and I know that I wrote a 25 page paper junior year in HS that was composed of letters from a soldier in Vietnam War and one who stayed behind (the ideal More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Nov 08, 2011

Chris rated it:

There is a line early in this book that reads, “Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if it were true.” It must be true, because I avoided this book for some time while everyone else was raving about it. It sounded much too sappy. A story told complete in letters? How could that possibly work? But Shaffer and Barrows pull it off brilliantly. Not since "The Help" have I read a book that I simply did not w More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)