Title:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Author:
Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer
Year:
2008
Synopsis:
January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb...
As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.
PART ONE
Mr Sidney Stark, Publisher
Stephens & Stark Ltd
21 St James’s Place
London SW1
8th January 1946
Dear Sidney,
Susan Scott is a wonder. We sold over forty copies of the book, which was very pleasant, but much more thrilling from my standpoint was the food. Susan managed to get hold of ration coupons for icing sugar and real eggs for the meringue. If all her literary luncheons are going to achieve these heights, I won’t mind touring the country. Do you suppose that a lavish bonus could spur her on to butter? Let’s try it—you may deduct the money from my royalties.
Now for my grim news. You asked me how work on my new book is progressing. Sidney, it isn’t. English Foibles seemed so promising at first After all, one should be able to write reams about the Society to Protest Against the Glorification of the English Bunny. I unearthed a photograph of the Vermin Exterminators’ Trade Union, marching down an Oxford street with placards screaming ‘Down with Beatrix Potter!’ But what is there to write about after a caption? Nothing, that’s what.
I no longer want to write this book—my head and my heart just aren’t in it. Dear as Izzy Bickerstaff is—and was—to me, I don’t want to write anything else under that name. I don’t want to be considered a light-hearted journalist any more. I do acknowledge that making readers laugh—or at least chuckle—during the war was no mean feat, but I don’t want to do it any more. I can’t seem to dredge up any sense of proportion or balance these days, and God knows one can’t write humour without them.
In the meantime, I am very happy that Stephens & Stark is making money on Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War. It relieves my conscience over the debacle of my Anne Bronte biography.
My thanks for everything and love,
Juliet
P. S. I am reading the collected correspondence of Mrs Montagu. Do you know what that dismal woman wrote to Jane Carlyle? ‘My dear little Jane, everyone is born with a vocation, and yours is to write charming little notes.’ I hope Jane spat at her.
From Sidney to Juliet
Miss Juliet Ashton
23 Glebe Place
Chelsea
London SW3
10th January 1946
Dear Juliet,
Congratulations! Susan Scott said you took to the audience at the luncheon like a drunkard to rum—and they to you—so please stop worrying about your tour next week. I have no doubt of your success. Having witnessed your electrifying performance of ‘The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation’ eighteen years ago, I know you will have every listener coiled around your little finger within moments. A hint perhaps in this case you should refrain from throwing the book at the audience afterwards.
Susan is looking forward to ushering you through bookshops from Bath to Yorkshire. And of course, Sophie is agitating for an extension of the tour into Scotland. I’ve told her in my most infuriating older-brother manner that It Remains To Be Seen. She misses you terribly, I know, but Stephens & Stark must be impervious to such considerations.
I’ve just received 7zz/s sales figures from London and the Home Counties—they are excellent. Again, congratulations!
Don’t fret about English Foibles; better that your enthusiasm should die now than after six months spent writing about bunnies.
The crass commercial possibilities of the idea were attractive, but I agree that the topic would soon grow horribly fey. Another subject—one you’ll like—will occur to you.
Dinner one evening before you go? Say when.
Love,
Sidney
P. S. You write charming little notes.
From Juliet to Sidney
11th January 1946
Dear Sidney,
Yes, lovely—can it be somewhere on the river? I want oysters and champagne and roast beef, if obtainable; if not, a chicken will do. I am very happy that Izzy;s sales are good. Are they good enough for me not to have to pack a suitcase and leave London?
As you and S&S have turned me into a moderately successful author, dinner must be my treat.
Love,
Juliet
P. S. I did not throw ‘The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation’ at the audience. I threw it at the elocution mistress. I meant to cast it at her feet, but I missed.
From Juliet to Sophie Strachan
Mrs Alexander Strachan
Feochan Farm
by Oban
Argyll
12th January 1946
Dear Sophie,
Of course I’d adore to see you, but I am a soulless, will-less automaton. I have been ordered by Sidney to Bath, Colchester, Leeds, and several other places I can’t remember at the moment, and I can’t just slope off to Scotland instead. Sidney’s brow would lower—his eyes would narrow—he would stalk. You know how nerve-racking it is when Sidney stalks.
I wish I could sneak away to your farm and be coddled. You’d let me put my feet on the sofa, wouldn’t you? And then you’d tuck me up in blankets and bring me tea? Would Alexander mind a permanent presence on his sofa? You’ve told me he is a patient man, but perhaps he would find it annoying.
Why am I so melancholy? I should be delighted at the prospect of reading Izzy to an entranced audience. You know how I love talking about books, and you know how I adore receiving compliments. I should be thrilled. But the truth is that I’m gloomy—gloomier than I ever felt during the war. Everything is so broken, Sophie: the roads, the buildings, the people. Especially the people.
It’s probably the after-effect of a horrid dinner party I went to last night The food was ghastly, but that was to be expected. It was the guests who unnerved me—they were the most demoralising collection of individuals I’ve ever encountered. The talk was of bombs and starvation. Do you remember Sarah Morecroft? She was there, all bones and gooseflesh and bloody lipstick. She used to be pretty, didn’t she? Wasn’t she mad about that riding chap who went up to Cambridge? He was nowhere to be seen; she’s married to a doctor with grey skin who clicks his tongue before he speaks. And he was positively romantic compared to the man sitting next to me, who just happened to be single, presumably the last unmarried man on earth—God, how miserably mean-spirite
d I sound! I swear, Sophie, I think there’s something wrong with me. Every man I meet is intolerable. Perhaps I should set my sights lower—not as low as the grey doctor who clicks, but a bit lower. I can’t even blame it on the war—I was never very good at men, was I?
Do you suppose the St Swithin’s furnace-man was my one true love? Since I never spoke to him, it seems unlikely, but at least it was a passion unscathed by disappointment And he had such beautiful black hair. After that, you remember, came the Year of Poets. Sidney scoffs about those poets, though I don’t see why, since he introduced me to them. Then poor Adrian. Oh, there’s no need to recite the dread rolls to you, but, Sophie—what is the matter with me? Am I too choosy? I don’t want to be married just for the sake of being married. I can’t think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can’t talk to, or worse, someone I can’t be silent with.
What a dreadful, complaining letter. You see? I’ve succeeded in making you feel relieved that I won’t be visiting Scotland. But then again, I may—my fate rests with Sidney.
Kiss Dominic for me and tell him I saw a rat the size of a terrier the other day.
Love to Alexander and even more to you,
Juliet
From Dawsey Adams, Guernsey, Channel Islands, to Juliet
Miss Juliet Ashton
81 Oakley Street
Chelsea
London SW3
12th January 1946
Dear Miss Ashton,
My name is Dawsey Adams, and I live on my farm in St Martin’s Parish, Guernsey. I know of you because I have an old book that once belonged to you—The Selected Essays of Elia, by an author whose name in real life was Charles Lamb. Your name and address were written inside the front cover.
I will speak plain—I love Charles Lamb. My own book says Selected, so I wondered if that meant he had written other things to choose from? These are the pieces I want to read, and though the Germans are gone now, there aren’t any bookshops left in Guernsey.
I want to ask a kindness of you. Could you send me the name and address of a bookshop in London? I would like to order more of Charles Lamb’s writings by post. I would also like to ask if anyone has ever written his life story, and if they have, could a copy be found for me? For all his bright and turning mind, I think Mr Lamb must have had a great sadness in his life.
Charles Lamb made me laugh during the German Occupation, especially when he wrote about the roast pig. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society came into being because of a roast pig we had to keep secret from the German soldiers, so I feel a kinship to Mr Lamb.
I am sorry to bother you, but I would be sorrier still not to know about him, as his writings have made me his friend.
Hoping not to trouble you,
Dawsey Adams
P. S. My friend Mrs Maugery bought a pamphlet that once belonged to you, too. It is called Was There a Burning Bush? A Defence of Moses and the Ten Commandments. She liked your margin note, ‘Word of God or crowd control???’ Did you ever decide which?
From Juliet to Dawsey
Mr Dawsey Adams
Les Vaux Lavens
La Bouvee
St Martin’s, Guernsey
15th January, 1946
Dear Mr Adams,
I no longer live in Oakley Street, but I’m so glad that your letter found me and that my book found you. It was a sad wrench to part with the Selected Essays of Elia. I had two copies and a dire need of shelf-room, but I felt like a traitor selling it. You have soothed my conscience.
I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.
Because there is nothing I would rather do than rummage through bookshops. I went at once to Hastings & Sons upon receiving your letter. I have gone to them for years, always finding die one book I wanted—and then three more I hadn’t known I wanted. I told Mr Hastings you would like a good, clean copy (and not a rare edition) of More Essays of Elia. He will send it to you by separate post (invoice enclosed) and was delighted to know you are also a lover of Charles Lamb. He said the best biography of Lamb was by E. V. Lucas, and he would hunt out a copy for you, though it may take a little while.
In the meantime, will you accept this small gift from me? It is his Selected Letters. I think it will tell you more about him than any biography ever could. E. V. Lucas sounds too stately to include my favourite passage from Lamb:
Buz, buz, buz, bum, bum, bum, wheeze, wheeze, wheeze, fen, fen, fen, rinky, tinky, tinky, cr’annch! I shall certainly come to be condemned at last. I have been drinking too much for two days running. I find my moral sense in the last stage of a consumption and my religion getting faint.
You’ll find that in the Letters (it’s on page 244). They were the first Lamb I ever read, and I’m ashamed to say I only bought the book because I’d read elsewhere that a man named Lamb had visited his friend Leigh Hunt, in prison for libelling the Prince of Wales.
While there, Lamb helped Hunt paint the ceiling of his cell sky blue with white clouds. Next they painted a rose trellis on one wall. Then, I further discovered, Lamb offered money to help Hunt’s family—though he himself was as poor as a man could be. Lamb also taught Hunt’s youngest daughter to say the Lord’s Prayer backwards. You naturally want to learn everything you can about a man like that.
That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you on to another book, and another bit there will lead you on to a third book. It’s geometrically progressive—all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
The red stain on the cover that looks like blood—is blood. I was careless with my paper knife. The enclosed postcard is a reproduction of a painting of Lamb by his friend William Hazlitt.
If you have time to correspond with me, could you answer several questions? Three, in fact Why did a roast-pig dinner have to be kept a secret? How could a pig cause you to begin a literary society? And, most pressing of all, what is a potato peel pie—and why is it included in your society’s name?
I am renting a flat in Chelsea, 23 Glebe Place, London SW3. My Oakley Street flat was bombed in 1945 and I still miss it Oakley Street was wonderful—I could see the Thames out of three of my windows. I know that I am fortunate to have any place at all to live in London, but I much prefer whining to counting my blessings. I am glad you thought of me to do your Elia hunting.
Yours sincerely,
Juliet Ashton
P. S. I never could make up my mind about Moses—it still bothers me.
From Juliet to Sidney
18th January 1946
Dear Sidney,
This isn’t a letter it’s an apology. Please forgive my moaning about the teas and luncheons you setup for Izzy. Did I call you a tyrant? I take it all back—I love Stephens & Stark for sending me out of London.
Bath is a glorious town: lovely crescents of white, upstanding houses instead of London’s black, gloomy buildings or worse still—piles of rubble that were once buildings. It is bliss to breathe in clean, fresh air with no coal smoke and no dust The weather is cold, but it isn’t London’s dank chill. Even the people on the street look different—upstanding, like their houses, not grey and hunched like Londoners.
Susan said the guests at Abbot’s book tea enjoyed themselves immensely—and I know I did. I was able to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth after the first two minutes and began to have quite a good time.
Susan and I are off tomorrow for bookshops in Colchester, Norwich, King’s Lynn, Bradford and Leeds.
Love and thanks,
Juliet
From Juliet to Sidney
21st January 1946
Dear Sidney,
Night-time train travel is wonderful again! No standing in the corridors for hours, no being shunted off for a troop train to pass, and above all, no black-out curtains. All the
windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war. I felt we had all turned into moles scuttling along in our separate tunnels. I don’t consider myself a real peeper—they go in for bedrooms, but it’s families in sitting rooms or kitchens that thrill me. I can imagine their whole lives from a glimpse of bookshelves, or desks, or burning candles, or bright cushions.
There was a nasty, condescending man in Tillman’s bookshop today. After my talk about Izzy, I asked if there were any questions. He leapt from his seat and pressed his nose to mine—how was it, he demanded, that I, a mere woman, dared to bastardise the name of Isaac Bickerstaff? ‘The true Isaac Bickerstaff, noted journalist, nay the sacred heart and soul of eighteenth-century literature; dead now and his name desecrated by you.’
Before I could muster a word, a woman in the back row jumped to her feet. ‘Oh, sit down! You can’t desecrate a person who never was! He’s not dead because he was never alive! Isaac Bickerstaff was a pseudonym for Joseph Addison’s Spectator columns! Miss Ashton can take up any pretend name she wants to—so shut up!’ What a valiant defender—he left the shop in a hurry.
Sidney, do you know a man called Markham V. Reynolds, Jr.? If you don’t, will you look him up for me—Who’s Who, the Domesday Book, Scotland Yard? Or he may simply be in the telephone directory. He sent a beautiful bunch of mixed spring flowers to me at the hotel in Bath, a dozen white roses to my train, and heaps of red roses to Norwich—all with no message, only his card.