Let's write letters again, yeah?

I really need to catch up to what I'm reading right now. I finished this book two weeks ago and it's hard to remember what my instant reaction to it was. Anyway, my mom gave this to me to read. It was her book club's selection for May. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is an epistolary novel set just after the end of World War II. The main character is a writer named Juliet who had a popular column for a British newspaper during the war and is now trying to a write a new book. By chance she comes into contact with a man from one of the islands in the English Channel, Guernsey, that had been occupied by Germany. Through letters she corresponds with various people on the island before she decides that she wants to write a book about their experiences and travels there herself. Epistolary novels are so fascinating. The entire story is made up of letters between Juliet and the residents of Guernsey, her editor, close friend, boyfriend and few random others. Sometimes the letters are between some of the minor characters. Occasionally telegraphs are used and at the end there is a journal from one of the islanders. Juliet, the little minx, has three men in her life: the man she starts dating shortly after the beginning of the book, her editor, the older brother of her best friend, and the man from Guernsey who wrote her the letter. I liked her editor, Sidney, and I thought that he was hopelessly in love with the fickle Juliet. And then you find out that he is gay and that Juliet has known for a long time about two/thirds of the way into the book. The guy she starts dating at the beginning is such a skeezeball that really anyone else she meets could be a better match for her, like the Guernsey man. The book has a large cast of entertaining characters. The flighty Isola was one of my favorites. While it is very humorous, it also deals with some serious things when talking about the war. Concentration camps always makes me want to cry and scream and never go outside again. Words cannot describe how completely fucked that was. Anyway, this was overall a rather enjoyable book. The ending leaves you feeling very at ease, unlike a certain other book somewhere below.

A sad note about the authors: Mary Ann Shaffer is the aunt of Annie Barrows. It is my understanding that most of the novel was written by Shaffer until poor health caused her to go to her niece to help her finish... and then she died. This was her only novel. How much would that blow to have spent so much time working on this piece and then not live to be able to see it in its finished form? I guess that the beauty of creating art is that you live on forever though it. Maybe one day after I'm gone someone will publish the MySpace blog I had my junior and senior years of high school. I aspire to spend eternity remembered as a whiny, pathetic little asshat.