Scooter Chronicles

Way back when, I read “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. According to information I have found, Shaffer started writing the book but her health declined. She then asked her niece, Barrows, to help finish the book. It appears from that information that Shaffer died before the book was published.

For a rundown on the plot, I turn to Booklist and part of the review by Mary Ellen Quinn found on Amazon.Com:

Winding up her book tour promoting her collection of lighthearted wartime newspaper columns, Juliet Ashton casts about for a more serious project. Opportunity comes in the form of a letter she receives from Mr. Dawsey Adams, who happens to possess a book that Julia once owned. Adams is a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – no ordinary book club. Rather, it was formed as a ruse and became a way for people to get together without raising the suspicions of Guernsey’s Nazi occupiers. Written in the form of letters ….

From time to time I come across a book that is gaining popularity after I noticed it. For some reason I was hesitant about reading it, and due to his upswing of interest in it, I usually would shy away. I ended up putting this on my wish list at PaperBackSwap and had nearly 200 members in front of me. But in only a couple of months enough copies surfaced that I wound up with one.

I had forgotten that the book was written entirely in the form of letters. When I started the book, I didn’t like this. It grew on me. It was interesting to find out more about a character when a letter is written by and to two other characters. Sometimes this presented a disjointed feeling, too. Big events were skipped over. Some planned big events were talked about, then summed up. It was odd not to actually read about the events in “real time.”

Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer

One point brought up by the reviewer that I stole my description from, sometimes the humor involved in the story doesn’t seem like a good reflection of the seriousness of the characters’ past with the Nazi occupation. One could say that it shows the truer sides of life. After all, even in bad times in our lives we find time to laugh. But at times, now looking back, it did seem out of place in a way.

The characters were interesting, and they grew on me. But with the development sometimes coming from second and third parties it was cumbersome at times. Dawsey was one of the hardest for me. His traits seemed to come out more near the end of the book which changed my perception of him. Given how he was written, he didn’t change, but he seemed to especially in the second half of the book.

I am sure many classify this book as “chic-lit” which does it an injustice. But I also don’t see this crossing over into the male reading world much. Sure, I enjoyed it, but the love story that starts to bloom near the end, coincidentally with Dawsey’s character emergence, it had me shaking my head at times. Still a good book.