Shelf Control #113: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Wednesday, the 11th of November, and time for Shelf Control once again! Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. To participate, simply pick a book from your TBR pile, and write a post about it–what its about, why you want to read it, where you got it and such. If you participate, don’t forget to link back to Lisa’s page, and do also leave your links in the comments below as I’d love to check out your picks as well!

This week, once again, I’m picking from my recent acquisitions, and is one I just picked up because it was on sale (on Kindle) and it was one I’d been hearing about a lot though I didn’t quite know what the story was about exactly–The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. This book was written by American author Mary Ann Shafer but the editor had requested changes which involved substantial rewriting; since her own health was declining at this point, Shafer entrusted the editing and rewriting to her niece, Annie Barrows, author of children’s books.

This one is set just after the Second World War–1946. Juliet Ashton is an author suffering writer’s block. One day she receives a letter from a stranger Dawsey Adams who came across her name written in a second-hand book of essays. And so she enters into correspondence with him and through this become aware of a society he is part of, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. She begins to correspond with other members as well and learns about their love for books, life on the island, and their time under German occupation. And she eventually ends up travelling to Guernsey! The book is told in epistolary form.

This sounds like a read which which combines elements that will be sweet and pleasant–the correspondence which develops between Juliet and the members of the society, but also graver themes like life under German occupation which will probably not be as easy to read about. While I do find books set around the war and the experiences that people went through hard to read about I also do think it important that we are aware of them, so this will be something I would want to pick up. I haven’t watched the film version so far.

Have you read this one? How did you find it? Looking forward to your thoughts!

Cover image and book info from Goodreads (here) and also Wikipedia (here).

Find Lisa’s pick this week, Mrs Everything by Jennifer Weiner here. This is historical fiction set in the 1960s about two girls for whom life doesn’t quite turn out what they’d imagined.

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