Reading Guernsey

I read this on the ABA Omnibus this morning

"I'm going to end this week's post by using this bookish community to offer yet another plug for the book I've been recommending since I finished it Monday night: The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society. It's absolutely fabulous, and I'm not the only one who thinks so!"

Maybe its because I spent a day in Guernsey a couple years ago during a family cruise. It was such a wonderful island off the southern coast of Great Britain, and I felt like I had stepped back in time a couple of decades. At a little shop I bought a signed copy of two books by the local author Molly Bihet. A Child's War, originally published in 1985, told of Molly's experiences during the occupation. She was nine years old when the Germans occupied Guernsey. The Channel Islands were the only part of Great Britain that was held by the German Army during the Second World War.
It meant a different way of growing up for the young girl. As she writes in the preface:

"I wanted to express my feelings during these difficult years of German rule and the different 'games' and unusual pastimes of a child done solely because we were hungry and restricted."

You can read more and hear her, in her own words, at the BBC Guernsey site.


So, I am anxious to read The Guernsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Pie Society, named for a book club that was born out of the need for a quick alibi when the characters were discovered by the German's breaking curfew. The authors are an aunt and niece team and it sounds like a delightful read.