A very Happy New Year to all of you. I hope 2013 has begun
on a positive note for you. I kicked off 2013 with a book shopping spree. My
bookshelves are now stocked with more contemporary fiction. As I mentioned in
my last post, I would like to read more books that were written in my lifetime.
Not that I will be giving up my beloved classics entirely, I could never do
that, but I do plan to go a little easy on them. To that end, my first read in
the New Year is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I had been
reading reviews of this book all over the blogsphere and it’s been on my TBR list
for a long while now.
TGLPPPS is an epistolary novel that starts out sounding a
lot like 84 Charing Cross Road (which I love so much), but soon it finds a
different arc and there all similarities end. The story takes off when Juliet
Ashton, a writer, receives a letter from a man in Guernsey who has a book that once belonged to Juliet. He
writes of his admiration for Charles Lamb and also tells her about their
strangely named book club and its interesting origins. Juliet
begins to toy with the idea of writing about this book club and soon starts to correspond
with all the other members of the society. Each of them writes to her about
their love for a book or author but most importantly about their lives during
and after the German occupation. Juliet soon starts to feel an immense
emotional connect with these people. More determined than ever to write about
them, she lands up in Guernsey for a visit that ends up a lot longer than she
had planned.
TGLPPPS is a pleasant and easy read. Exactly what I needed
after spending so long in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s grey and bleak world. Some of the characters are very well
written and the tone of the book is very light and humorous, even though it
does deal with the aftermath of the war.
I don’t remember reading anything set in the Chanel Islands before this
so I enjoyed the insight into a land I know very little about. A good start to
the year’s reading. Hope we all have a lot more great books to read in 2013.
Agreed--this was a delightful read. If you want to linger in that location and in that time period, The Soldier's Wife is also set in one of the Channel Islands during WWII.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recommendation, will definitely look into The Soldier's Wife.
ReplyDeleteI read this a couple of years ago. It is really a well done work and I loved how it showed ordinary people getting into reading and I learned a good bit about life in the Channel Islands during W W II. I hope 2013 is a great reading and total year for you.
ReplyDeleteThank you Mel. I wish you a great 2013 too.
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