Ever read a book that made you desperately wish you could buttonhole the characters and demand they immediately become your friends? That's this book. Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows create a witty, plucky English author who has used her literary gifts in wry short stories that manage to make a nation under fire laugh a little- no small feat. But she needs a new project, one a little more substantial. Inspiration comes in the form of a letter from a man she has never met who lives on the Guernsey Islands (which were occupied by the Nazis during the war). He and his friends accidentally created an unusual and eclectic literary society that becomes something rich and extraordinary in the lives of all its colorful members.
The book is epistolary for the most part- written as letters back and forth- a form I usually abhor as something contrived and frankly rather boring; here it's fresh, witty, and impossible to put down. I startled my husband several times by bursting into laughter reading this book, but I think he became slightly concerned when he caught me wandering through the kitchen with a stricken expression and tears streaming down my cheeks. Amazing story about the power of really great books, true friends, deep tragedy and triumph over it, and of course, true love. The best book I read this year, and one of my new favorites.
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