The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - July Book Club

Firstly we need to thank Anna for bringing along some delicious chocolate flapjacks, and white chocolate and macadamia nut cupcakes.

This book has to be the first one we've all been of one mind on, we all loved it! Most of the club were very apprehensive because they didn't think from the cover artwork and the title that this would be their type of book. However once the book was started everyone changed their mind about it and found themselves really enjoying it. One of our members loved it so much she started casting the roles if the book was a movie! This started the rest of us off as well.

Because the book is written in the form of letters there's not a lot of description of the characters in terms of looks etc. this made it a little tricky to identify them all as they popped in and out of the story. Even so Elizabeth made her presence felt through her strong personality without actually writing any of the letters. We found Dawsey to be a little confusing, was he an old or a young person?

The book gave us a lot of insight into the way people lived on Guernsey during the war without it being too much of a history book. There seemed to be the right amount of the horrors of war countered with the sweetness of the people and the love story running through the book.

We got into a bit of a discussion about whether we would be able to send our children away if we had been the islanders. I don't think there was a conclusion other than you don't know how you would react unless you're in the situation. We all thought it must have been a horrific thing to have to go through.

We also wondered whether the authors had any particular reason for choosing the books they did for the book club to be reading in the novel? We thought they were very odd choices, maybe because this was all that was left on the island? We weren't sure. Also, the names of the characters were very unusual, we wondered were they realistic or not.

We gave this book a 9 out of 10 overall with no-one marking it lower than a 7.