Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society -- December 2013

Website includes link to Google Map of Guernsey locations mentioned in the book.

Check out this user-created map of Guernsey from GoogleMaps

You’ll find quotes from the book relating to various sites around the island, as well as photos of each area. This map is also useful for readers to orient themselves on Guernsey while reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Based on these photos, does Guernsey look like you imagined it did while reading the book?
Many thanks to the google user “SubmarineGuernsey” for creating this map!
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=49.460091,-2.5811&spn=0.121171,0.296288&t=h&z=12&msid=100914396836643406446.0004770085524a485bbdb

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http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/guernsey/

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Read-alikes from NoveList:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

By: Shaffer, Mary Ann

In 1946, writer Juliet Ashton finds inspiration for her next book in her correspondence with a native of Guernsey, who tells her about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book club born as an alibi during German occupation.

1.	The book of Ebenezer Le Page by Gerald Basil Edwards Reason:  Also set in post-World War II Guernsey, portrays the German occupation and wartime life as recalled after the war. -- Katherine Johnson
2.	Island magic by Elizabeth Goudge Reason:  Like the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society this is an atmospheric book set on the British Isle of Guernsey. While the time periods are different (World War II and 19th century, respectively) both are heartwarming character-driven novels. -- Katherine Johnson
3.	I'll be seeing you by Suzanne Hayes Reason:  Set in the United States during WWII, this ia another warm, moving epistolary historical novel which  shares the daily lives of appealing characters, told from multiple perspectives. -- Kathy Stewart
4.	The soldier's wife by Margaret Leroy Reason:  If you fell in love with the characters and the island in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, try The Soldier's Wife, which also vividly depicts the island and the struggles of its people in that time period. -- Katherine Johnson
5.	Sarah's key  by Tatiana de Rosnay Reason:  This book also  reflects on life under German occupation during World War II. It is  moving and atmospheric, offering a glimmer of hope in the darkness of war time. -- Katherine Johnson
6.	The uncommon reader by Alan Bennett Reason:  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Uncommon Reader are amusing but also thought-provoking sagas of how reading can change a person or society's outlook on life. -- Katherine Johnson
7.	Fair and tender ladies by Lee Smith Reason:  This is also a reflective epistolary novel featuring characters who are overcoming economic and social hardships to find a positive outlook on life. -- Katherine Johnson
8.	The postmistress by Sarah Blake Reason:  Using the characters' letters to express their experiences in a very personal way, these two books provide intimate accounts of how World War II affected people who were not in the center of the fighting. -- Katherine Johnson
9.	La's orchestra saves the world by Alexander McCall Smith Reason:  La flees German bombs and a bad marriage, settling in a small town far from London. Readers interested in novels about how World War II affected the personal lives of British citizens, and how they coped with the circumstances, will want to try both of these novels. -- Katherine Johnson The zoo created by the naturalist Gerald Durrell is on the Isle of Jersey.  My Family and Other Animals, his memoir of spending time on Corfu as a boy in the 1930’s is delightful (and very funny)... as is the DVD of the book. Another author who began writing novels late in life is Mary Wesley, author of the Camomile Lawn. From Literature Resource Center (Gale):  Since her debut as a novelist at the age of seventy, British writer Mary Wesley has produced a string of critically acclaimed and best-selling works that make her, according to Philip Howard in the London Times, "one of the most distinctive voices in English fiction." The recent Tolstoy and the Purple Chair; My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch is a memoir of books and reading. “Torn apart by grief after losing her sister, the author, a 46-year-old mother of four, turned to literature for comfort, devoting herself to reading one book a day for a year, which brought much needed joy, healing and wisdom into her life”

Some other epistolary novels:

Nick Bantock  Griffin and Sabine

Elizabeth Hailey A Woman of Independent Means

Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos Les Liaisons Dangereuses

C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters

Samuel Richardson Pamela; Or, Virtue Rewarded

Dorothy L. Sayers Documents in the Case

Alice Walker The Color Purple

Jean Webster Daddy Long Legs 

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Potato Peel Pie Recipe (all from http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/guernsey/book/)

 

Here’s a recipe for a potato peel pie, but I warn you, it tastes like paste. The more authentic it is, the nastier. These ingredients will make a very small pie (expand at will):

1 potato

1 beet

1 Tablespoon milk

Peel the potato and put the peelings in a pie pan. Don’t cook the peels, because you’re in the middle of an Occupation and you don’t have any fuel. Boil the potato and the beet together in salty water, but not for very long, due to the fuel problem. Just until you can stick a fork in the potato. Take them out and mash them up with the milk. Pour the glop in the pie pan. Bake at 375 for as short a time as is consonant with digestion (fuel again), say, fifteen minutes.

The finished product will look quite attractive and pink. If you squint, you can almost imagine raspberries. Don’t be fooled. It looks a lot better than it is. However, if you forgot that you were in the middle of WWII and added a bunch of butter and milk and salt, it could be quite tasty.

Annotated List of Important Books in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel

 Pie Society

Jane Austen

- Pride and Prejudice. Isola plans on speaking about it at a meeting but her goat eats her notes (p. 234).

Emily Bronte

- Wuthering Heights. One of Isola’s favorite books. She talks about Anne and Charlotte Bronte as well but doesn’t mention specific titles (p. 53).

Thomas Carlyle

- Past and Present. The first book that Will Thisbee enjoys helps him “get a grip on Faith.” (p. 101).

Geoffrey Chaucer

- The Canterbury Tales. Sidney’s favorite favorite book; the topic of a Society meeting (p. 243).

Charles Dickens

- The Pickwick Papers. Amelia’s favorite – it lifts her spirits during the Occupation (p. 50).

Charles Lamb

- Selected Essays of Elia. Dawsey has Juliet’s old copy; reason for his first letter to her (p. 9).

- More Essays of Elia and Selected Letters. Juliet sends to Dawsey (p. 11).

Wilfred Owen

- The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen. Owen’s poetry helps Clovis Fossey to describe his experiences in WWI (p. 72).

Rainer Maria Rilke

- Collected poetry (exact title not specified). A gift from Christian to Elizabet6h, with the inscription, “For Elizabeth, who turns darkness into light.” (p. 259).

Seneca

- Letters of Seneca. John Booker writes that Seneca and the Society keep him from being a drunk (p. 88).

William Shakespeare

- Selections from Shakespeare. Eben Ramsey’s favorite book. He quotes Shakespeare when talking about the German troops landing on Guernsey (p. 63).

Oscar Wilde

– An important author in the book—he writes a series of letters to Isola’s grandmother—but none of his works are specifically mentioned.

A Glimpse of Guernsey

GUERNSEY HISTORY AND TRIVIA

• Guernsey Island is the second largest of the Channel Islands; it is also the western-most. It lies a mere 30 miles from France, and 125 miles south of England.
• Guernsey is the site of the Les Fouillages burial mound, possibly the oldest man-made structure in Europe.
• Geology indicates that the Channel Islands were once part of France’s mainland. Rising sea levels created these islands around 6000 B.C.
• The Bailiwick of Guernsey (comprised of the Island of Guernsey as well as Sark, Alderney, Herm and other islets) is not part of the United Kingdom, but a possession of the Crown, comparable to the Island of Man, and not part of the European Union.
• In 933 A.D. Guernsey became a possession of the Duchy of Normandy; when William the Conqueror’s took Britain’s crown in 1066, the Channel Islands were already part of his oversight. The name for the Islands’ overlord is The Duke of Normandy and this is the title given to Elizabeth II today.
• On June 15, 1940, in the midst of World War II, the British Government declared that the Channel Islands were of no strategic importance and would not be defended militarily. However, elected island officials were consulted on a plan to evacuate the islands. True to their iconoclastic heritage, each of the four islands (Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, and Sark) chose a different strategy. Guernsey elected to evacuate all children of school age but gave the parents the option of keeping the children with them on the island, or allowing them to evacuate with their class.
• German reconnaissance planes saw a convoy of lorries in St. Peters Port (the capital of Guernsey) and mistook them for troop carriers; the subsequent bombing killed 41 civilians. In truth, the convoy was carrying tomatoes to the ships attempting to bring produce to Britain.
• The German forces landed on Guernsey on June 30, 1940 (the other Channel Islands followed over the next few days) and remained—heavily reinforcing the islands well beyond their strategic value—until May 9, 1945, still celebrated today as Liberation Day.
• On June 15, 1940, the British Government declared that the Channel Islands were of no strategic importance and would not be defended. However, elected island officials were consulted on a plan to evacuate the islands. True to their iconoclastic heritage, each of the four islands (Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, and Sark) chose a different strategy. Guernsey elected to evacuate all children of school age but gave the parents the option of keeping the children with them on the island, or allowing them to evacuate with their class.
• Victor Hugo wrote many of his novels while exiled to Guernsey, including Les Miserables. He lived in Hautville House which has since become the French Embassy; his novel, Toilers of the Sea, was set on and dedicated to the island.
• There are two national animals of Guernsey: the Guernsey cow and the donkey. While the former’s position is self-evident, the latter was important due to the steepness of the ways in and out of St. Peters Port. It has also been said that the donkey was also tribute to Guernsey inhabitant’s stubbornness.
• During the English Civil War, Guernsey sided with Parliament while neighboring Jersey was Royalist. However, the Royalist-tending Governor of the Island, Sir Peter Osbourne, took possession of Castle Coronet and bombarded St. Peters Port regularly. When he capitulated in 1651, Osbourne was the last Royalist to do so.
• The official language of Guernsey is English, but French influence is clear in the several local dialects including Guernésiais (aka Guernsey Norman French).
• Potato Peel Pie is not a delicacy of Guernsey, but should you visit you may enjoy a Guernsey Gache which is a bread laced with raisins, sultanas, and mixed dried peels … of fruit, not potato.
• Renior painted on Guernsey; some of his paintings were used in a set of commemorative stamps issued in 1983.
• In more recent years, Guernsey and other Channel Islands have become popular havens for people seeking tax relief; its largest industry is finance.
• Guernsey’s colorful recent history includes:
• The Island’s official color is Green—sports jerseys, etc.
• The Island hosts the same distinctive post-boxes and phone-booths one sees in England…but Guernsey’s are not painted red (like Royal Mail boxes) but a cobalt blue.
• A new flag was instituted in 1985; it incorporates the badge of William of Normandy (aka the Conqueror of 1066) as show in the famous Bayeux Tapestry, touting the island’s French-British heritage.
• Did you know this person lived in Guernsey?
• Victor Hugo (mentioned above)
• Roy Dotrice—actor (best known for “Beauty and the Beast,” “Picket Fences” and the reader of 3 of the Audio-book adaptations of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire Saga)
• William La Lacheur—considered the “father” of the coffee import business bringing the great bean from Costa Rica to the UK.
• Oliver Reed—actor, who although born in Wimbledon, lived in great part in Guernsey due to some difficulty with the tax officials.
• Andrew (Andy) Graham Priaulx – current World Touring Car Championship Champion, a crown he has held since 2004.
• Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine—Academy-award winning actresses descended from a 15th century family of Guernsey natives.

CHILD SOLDIERS

There are a number of books about child soldiers in Africa.  We have read two that dealt with boys forcibly participating in and escaping violence:  What is the What; the Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng by Dave Eggers and Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder.  Here are a few additional titles about child soldiers.

Young soldiers : why they choose to fight by Rachel Brett & Irma Specht. (2004)

Based on interviews with 53 young soldiers and ex-soldiers from nine countries around the world who identify themselves as having "volunteered" for national armies, paramilitaries, rebel groups, or other armed groups, the authors bring together the under-18s' own views about why they are combatants.

Son of a gun by Anne de Graaf. (2012)  [Juvenile novel]

Siblings Lucky and Nopi, eight and ten, are kidnapped from school, and forced to serve as child soldiers in Liberia's civil war

Child, victim, soldier : the loss of innocence in Uganda  by Donald H. Dunson. (2008)

Dunson (a missionary priest who worked in Africa) tells the stories of children abducted and forced to serve as soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group in Northern Uganda.

First kill your family : child soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's  Resistance Army by Peter Eichstaedt. (c2009)

Describes the experiences of children kidnapped into service for the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, in which boys are required to complete brutal initiations--murdering their parents, friends, and relatives--and girls are forced into sexual slavery and labor

Children are diamonds : an African apocalypse, a novel / by Edward Hoagland. (2013)

A vision of contemporary Africa almost as horrifying as Conrad's in Heart of Darkness, with violence flaring in all directions--toward children, toward Africans and toward NGO workers engaged in humanitarian works.

Beasts of no nation : a novel  by  Uzodinma Iweala. (2005)

In this stunning debut novel, Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil war engulfs his country. Haunted by his father's own death at the hands of militants, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander. While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the conflict started—a life of school friends, church services, and time with his family still intact.

In a powerful, strikingly original voice that vividly captures Agu's youth and confusion, Uzodinma Iweala has produced a harrowing, inventive, and deeply affecting novel.

War child : a child soldier's story by  Emmanuel Jal ; with Megan Lloyd Davies.(2009)

His mother killed and his father a commander in the Christian Sudanese Liberation Army, Jal became a child soldier. Now he is a musician and Oxfam and Amnesty International spokesman, and a documentary of his life won the Cadillac Award at the Tribeca Film Festival

War child [videorecording] / 18th Street Films ;  in association with Interface Media Group and The Global Fund for Children ; a C. Karim Chrobug film ; directed by C. Karim Chrobug ; produced by C. Karim Chrobug, Afshin Molavi.

Washington, D.C. : Reel U Films, 2008. 1 videodisc (92 min.) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in.

And still peace did not come : a memoir of reconciliation by Agnes Kamara-Umunna and Emily Holland. (2011)

A Liberian journalist sifts through agonizing stories of the victims and perpetrators of 14 years of civil war in her country.

War brothers : the graphic novel / Sharon E. McKay, Daniel Lafrance ; art by Daniel Lafrance. (2013)

[Adaptation of: War brothers / Sharon McKay.]

Gr 9 Up—In this devastatingly realistic graphic novel, 14-year-old Jacob and his friends are just starting school at George Jones Seminary for Boys. The story tells of their subsequent kidnapping and near induction into the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

After Kony : staging hope  [videorecording]/ a Voices in Harmony production ; written and edited by Paul Freedman directed bBil Yoelin ; produced by Melissa Fitzgerald, Katy S. Fox ;

[New York] : First Run Features, c2012. 1 videodisc (approx. 99 min.) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in.

English and Luo dialogue; English subtitles. Narrator, Melissa Fitzgerald. Originally released as a motion picture in 2011.

Follows a team of actors, playwrights, and activists who use  theater to help Ugandan teens share their story of resilience through a childhood filled with terror caused by Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army. Many of the teens were former child soldiers or sex slaves that escaped from their Lord's Resistance Army abductors. By dramatizing their stories, the teens are able to explore their traumatic past, as well as share their voices with the community and the world.

Child warriors [videorecording] / A&E Television Networks ;  [presented by] The History Channel. (c2010)

1 videodisc (47 min.) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in.  Narrated by Craig Sechler.

Right now, hundreds of thousands of children are being used as active combatants in conflicts across the globe, some as young as seven years old. This deeply moving program brings the tragic issue of child soldiers to light through the lens of a comprehensive investigation.

War witch [videorecording] = [Rebelle] / Tribeca Film presents an  Item 7 and Shen Studio production; [New York] : Cinedigm Entertainment Corp., [2013]

1 videodisc (approximately 90 min.) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in. Originally released as a motion picture in 2012. Director, Kim Nguyen. with Rachel Mwanza, Alain Lino Mic Eli Bastien, Serge Kanyinda.

A brutal yet poetic snapshot of life as one of Africa's child soldiers, following a young girl who is kidnapped from her  village by a group of rebel fighters. Forced to gun down  members of her family and enemy soldiers, she takes solace in  fellow soldier Magician, a young albino with whom she escapes and starts a new life.

13+ for violence  Dialog in French and Lingala; optional subtitles in English.