The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer (deceased) and finished by Annie Barrows is a strangely light-hearted interpretation of the the travails besetting Guernsey island residents during the Nazi German occupation of WWII. Although the narrative does describe the occupiers’ cruel and draconian measures against Guernsey’s residents, its epistolary form focusing on the career and romantic entanglements of its protagonist, Juliet Ashton almost trivializes the hard times and terrors her Guernsey correspondents suffered.
Nevertheless, many of the characters in this entertaining novel (a feat, making Nazi occupation entertaining a la Hagan’s Heroes) are well drawn and appealing. After weeks of reading one dystopian speculative fiction novel after another, this reading nudged me into a less cynical and anxious state of mind.