Bookraft

The opening letters in the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie  Society hardly seemed like an auspicious start to a novel experience. And then upon discovering that those opening letters were not just part of the preface but were to be the whole content of the book - and my reading allegiance was shaken. But I soldiered on. The method of telling a story by a series of letter and notes is called an epistlatory style [Something that I had just encountered in A Presumption of Death but Jill Walsh had used  letters as opening markers at start of  chapters and not as the  exclusive narrative mechanism].

In short I was a bit dubious about the Potato Peel Pie Society.

And then to have in the audiobook  an ingenue voice for Juliet ... the only reason I continued to read=listen to the book was the fact that I was on a long trip into Toronto and I didn't want to hear the 680 News for the umpteenth time. Lucky me!

First I discovered that Juliet had some pluck - managing to navigate to the end of the World War II writing a series of  columns for the Spectator magazine as Izzy Bixedorf  which turned out to be very popular. So the columns were collected into a book and Juliet was traveling all over England in early 1946 promoting the book when she receives a letter from a Guernsey islander requesting information about  the 118th century English writer Charles Lamb.

That is the second catch - the book is about the recovery in England and Guernsey from the World War 2 where Guernsey is a small British island off the coast of France. Guernsey was invaded and taken by the Germans early in the War. Guernsey acts as a proxy for all of Europe and the ravishes on the island reflect what happened in Europe.

The third hook in the book is the almost invisible contest for Juliet's heart between Prince Mark of the USA and Dawsey, the Charles Lamb admirer from Guernsey. This is the not uncommon contest between business success and discovering and being with the people who love the things that you do. And that introduces the fourth character, Juliet's alter ego or moral better-half, Elizabeth McKenna. Finding out about Elizabeth, first through letters and then by visiting Guernsey in pursuit of a her book story is also about Juliet discovering herself.

And self-discovery could hardly be better than the cast and crew of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This is where the audiobook triumphs. There are five readers for the many voices in the story. Its as if you are at a top English theater/staging company and each reader does not miss an opportunity to give a unique voice to their character. The result is that the audiobook has a leg up on the printed one. When I first read the book [I had received a copy as a Christmas gift]I sort of in-mind voiced a difference in the letters of each character - the writing helped. But I had become distracted and so I took up the audiobook at the library. And I am glad I did because hearing the audio rendering causes the characters to literally come to life. If you can - choose the audiobook.

But also choose this book for the many and engrossing character sketches. Reading the letters is like watching a very good sketch artist . Isola, Christian, Adelaide Addisson, and dozens of other England and Guernsey goers are drawn with such deft strokes- sometimes humorous, other times tragic - you will laugh and cry out loud at their shades of humanity. It is a good read and a great audio performance.