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Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2009 > May > 16 > Entry
“The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”
“The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (Dial Press, 290 pages, $14).
Thousands of books are published every year. Out of all these books it is very rare to find even one book that could be called a phenomenon. “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” is such a book.
In 1980 Mary Ann Shaffer paid a visit to a small island off the coast of France. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands, a part of England that was occupied by the German Army during World War II.
Shaffer, a lifelong lover of books, saw a story in it. It took her a long time to decide to write it. The members of her writing group encouraged her. Twenty years later she began writing what would eventually become this book.
It was published in July of last year. Shaffer’s one and only novel has dominated the best-seller lists, selling over half a million copies in just 10 months. But Shaffer didn’t live to enjoy it.
She became too ill to finish what she began so she passed on the project to her niece, Annie Barrows. Shaffer died five months before the book came out.
In an interview, Annie Barrows explained her role in the creation of this whimsical novel: “ My aunt had finished the story but there was a lot more that both she and the editor wanted to add to the book. She couldn’t do it. I went back, I started at the very beginning and added all the way through, giving more detail about the story that was there.”
And what a story. The book is written in the form of a series of letters. In January 1946, the main character Juliet Ashton, a writer living in London, receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a resident of Guernsey. He is a member of a book club called the “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.”
Intrigued, Juliet begins a correspondence which takes her to Guernsey where this marvelous, heartwarming story unfolds. It should come as no surprise that this book about a book club has become a huge hit with book clubs.
It’s romantic, sentimental, heartbreaking and healing, all wrapped up in one big swirling ball of letters and books. Barrows said that “a huge piece of this book’s appeal is that it’s a bouquet to book readers and to books themselves.”
When Shaffer dreamed up the character of Juliet, she was inventing a fictional variation of herself. Barrows explains that in Juliet “there’s this wonderful charming voice right there from the beginning.”
I assumed that Shaffer had to be British. She wasn’t. She grew up in Martinsburg, W.V., and briefly went to college at Miami University.
Barrows explains: “She didn’t stay — she hated college.”
When the paperback version of the book debuts on the New York Times bestseller list in the coming week, it will gain a special distinction. It will join up with the hardcover version on the charts, where it has soared since last year. Now that’s phenomenal.
Annie Barrows visits Books & Co. at The Greene in Beavercreek at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 20.
She visits Joseph-Beth Booksellers, 2692 Madison Road in Cincinnati at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 21.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: confessions of a galley slave
Comments
By vick
May 21, 2009 8:50 PM | Link to this
Barbara, welcome back! I missed you…By Barbara Delaney
May 21, 2009 5:54 PM | Link to this
I have to disagree on the merits of this book. I would shelve this book right next to “Tuesdays with Morrie” or “The Bridges of Madison County”. Popular and puerile, useful as an emetic if nothing else