The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrow

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥♥

What a lovely little book. I call it "little" only  because it made me feel like I was in a cozy little world containing just me and the 15 odd characters from the book writing each other letters and chatting over our knitting.

The story is revealed through letters and telegrams to and from the "narrator", the journalist and author, Juliet Ashton. There are a few bits of correspondence between other characters in the book talking directly to one another, but mainly the story is about how Juliet learns of the experience of the inhabitants of the Channel Islands during German Occupation of the islands during WWII. She grows to love the people with whom she corresponds and even moves there to immerse herself in the Guernsey experience.

There were several things I thought were a little odd about the book:
1) The fact that all the letters are written in the same "voice" - the pig farmer's letter sound almost exactly like those Juliet writes, and those bear strong resemblance to the letters written by the Juliet's publisher.

2) Juliet ends up adopting a 4 year old child after knowing her for what seems like a matter of months. Not sure how that would even come to pass...

3) Spoiler! The main "romance" happens between Juliet and a pig farmer. But apart from their initial correspondence where they talk about poets, and then their casual talks about the history of the Guernsey and books, they don't really seem to really know a whole lot about each other.
That's the trouble with this "letter and note" format - everything we know about the characters is confined to these snippets and anecdotes - which can get frustrating if you want to get a real sense of character and motivation. End of spoiler.

4) I was expecting a lot more trauma and angst in the characters. I mean, these people just 
spent a few rather horrific years being imprisoned in their own home and treated like slaves, they know close friends who have been brutalized by the Nazi campaign. But everyone seems to have suffered nothing more lasting that a general sense of sadness and melancholy. There are a couple characters who are worse affected, but those seems like outliers rather than the norm.

5) The characters all seem a bit "caricatur-ish" - like there a meddlesome old woman, a stoic and stalwart farmer, a drunk, a termagant spinster who hates "fun", a crass and confident American, a lovely and appealing main character who seems to be universally adored and who effortlessly attracts men wherever she goes. And so on...

6) There is reference to this one "special" character from the island - Elizabeth - who is painted as some sort of saintly Madonna that I found to be rather a stretch. I think we are supposed to feel EXTRA sad about how she was sent to a Nazi prison camp because she was such a wonderful person. But I thought she was a little too perfect to be a believable character and you almost feel like it was unnecessary to show her as such. It would have been sad enough that she was sent to a camp if she were just a regular person - she didn't need to be a saint for me to feel bad.

Ultimately though, these things didn't change the fact that I did enjoy reading this book. The writing was witty and easy to digest and despite some of my criticisms above, I did begin to care for the characters.

What I liked:
1) What I enjoyed most of all was the writing. There were some wonderful, easy-on-the-ear snippets and clever little turns of phrase that had me smiling often.

2) I didn't know much about the Channel Islands and the islanders' experience during WWII so I learned something new about the war and it gives one good perspective of how far reaching the effects of that horrible time were.

3) I thought the love story (although a little unbelievable) was really sweet.

4) I liked the contained little universe created by the letter writers - it makes you feel like you're on an island yourself, far away from everything "real", like bombed out buildings or concentration camps. 

Friendly little quotes that I highlighted while I was reading: 
"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book , and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment"

"I much prefer whining to counting my blessings"

"I can imagine their entire lives from a glimpse of a bookshelves, or desks, or lit candles, or bright sofa cushions."

(Of bookshop owners) "...clever customers ask for a recommendation...whereupon we frog-march them over to a particular volume and command them to read it."

 (Of a character's trophy shelf) "There were statues for everything a man could jump over, either by himself or on a horse."

"...as a token of our long friendship, you do not need to comment on this story - not ever. In fact, I'd far prefer it if you didn't."

(On the efforts of a particularly persistent suitor) "So far, his blandishments are entirely floral"

"'Life goes on.' What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever."

"The Mind will make friends with any thing."

"I sat; arms crossed, hands tucked under my armpits, glaring like a molting eagle, looking around for someone to hate."

"Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb." Quote from Roman philosopher Seneca

"[She] believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it."

The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥

Eva's beautiful and charming sister dies leaving Eva unmoored and looking for a place to call home. She returns to the summer home of her childhood, Trelowarth mansion in Cornwall where she and her sister shared many happy memories. While there Eva starts experiencing some strange "hallucinations" of a time in the 1700s at Trelowarth. It turns out these aren't hallucinations but she's actually traveling back several centuries and meets people who are involved in the Jacobin uprising to return the Catholic King James from his exile in France in order to take over England's Protestant rule of Scotland. These men are also privateers - smugglers of contraband like brandy, tobacco, lace and other goods the British government taxes heavily.

One of the men she meets is the mysterious, handsome Daniel Butler - staunch Jacobite and privateer who captains his own ship The Sally. Eva passes in and out of the time periods without warning and she can't really control the timing of when she enters and leaves each period.

I don't like supernatural, magical stuff at all. The time-traveling was perhaps a little too much for me but I will say that SK is such a good writer that some of the romance of the story did sneak in and make me happy that the two main characters found each other - even if it was a cross-century romance. Talk about long distance!

The book was well-written and develops a nice, moody atmosphere but I just didn't buy the love story. Why does she love him? He's tall, dark and handsome, sure but what else? The two characters spend very little time getting to know one another and I don't buy that if someone from the future comes to visit, you don't immediately sit them down and make them tell you everything they know. Wouldn't you just be naturally curious? The characters in the 1700s seem to be a uniquely un-curious lot. The H does some gentle questioning (about the invention of matches!? There is a political event going on that could change the course of history and you want to know about matches?) and the h is extremely guarded about sharing her knowledge so as not to spoil things and rend the space-time continuum. 

The point SK wanted to make was that ultimately, even if you know what the future holds, you still need to do what you must in the present. But I guess I fundamentally don't believe that* so the story was a little tough for me to truly fall for. 

* The plot to return King James to the throne of Scotland ultimately failed and a lot of people lost their lives. If you know what will happen in the future, even if you can't change it, wouldn't you do everything in your power to at least minimize the horror for as many people as you could? This is what I find frustrating and confusing about time-traveling stories that tell you the future is "fixed". Seems like a fateful and passive way to think about things. You may as well not exist at all then - because the future will just happen all the same without you in it. 

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥♥

The Winter Sea would make a great movie. It will be a crime against women if James McAvoy does NOT play the main dude. Granted he's a bit younger than the guy in the book, but we can suspend disbelief that far, can't we Skeptics?

See the YouTube trailer for the book below.

The Winter Sea is not a romance novel, per se, but it is definitely Romantical! SK's style reminded me of Tracy Chevalier's (Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Lady and the Unicorn, Remarkable Creatures) and puts you in a sort of dreamy, trance-like state where you genuinely feel like you have been transported to the misty moors of the Scottish coast.

The story-within-a-story arrangement deals with two time periods, the present day, and the years around 1708 - the time of the Jacobin uprising of the Scots. This was a failed plot by the supporters of the exiled Catholic King James to take back the throne from the Protestant English Queen Anne. 

The historical heroine lives with the Countess of Erroll at Slains Castle, right by a swirling, grey sea, and through her we learn of the men who come and go through the castle, plotting to return the "rightful" king, King James, to Scotland. Scotland is at a crossroads; It is a tense and dangerous time and we see how its fate lies ultimately in the hands of those who love and those who ultimately betray each other and the country.

In the present day, the modern heroine rents a cottage nearby the Castle and falls under its spell. She channels the story of the historical heroine and of a Scotland that stands at the precipice.

In both the present day and historical stories, SK weaves in two rather lovely romantic stories that, at least in the historical story's case, drive the plot forward and infuse the characters with even greater purpose and passion for their mission to bring back the King. The romance set in modern times was just for fun! Although, it probably worked so well because as SK flipped back and forth in the two time periods we can see how elements of historical heroine's life were reflected in the modern one's.

The book was surprisingly "technical" - there was some thoroughly researched historical material about the Jacobin uprising and the major players in that intrigue. SK deals with it all with a light hand so I never felt overwhelmed with information. She uses the raw, Scottish landscape beautifully. Not only the sea, but the castle ruins, her descriptions of the moody weather and terrain were all gorgeous and made me wish for a wee dram of whiskey to complement the mood.

Glad I picked this one up and especially glad I didn't read any Amazon reviews of it because there were tons of spoilers in those! I look forward to watching Jimmy in the movie. And since it's set in Scotland, I shall expect him to be attired in a kilt. 

I have SK's newer one - The Rose Garden, which I shall begin soon. Watch this space...

Love and Other Perishable Items by Laura Buzo

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥♥

New favorite question to ask when reading anything, including Justin Bieber's twitter feed: "What was the point of the whole series of events if not for the hero to mature?"


Amelia is 15 and possesses all the usual accouterments of a pre-adult girl: insecurity about her looks, a confused love/hate relationship with her family and an Australia-sized capacity for crushing on a boy. She's emotional and earnest and invests an inordinate amount of her teenage intensity in characters from classical literature. Gatsby and Daisy get some harsh reproach, as do the Pip/Estella/Mrs. Havisham trifecta from Great Expectations. She heaps special judgement on those characters she decides are weak-minded in their romantic affairs.

In one of her rants against the feeble-mindedness of one character in her literature books who is pining for the love of another she poses the question "What was the point of the whole series of events if not for the hero to mature?" What a perfect question for a teenager, nay any-ager, to ask! It's especially wonderful because thinking about an answer shows the hilarious mixture of self-reflection and self-blindness that every person - not just 15-year-old hormonal adolescents - have boiling up within them. 

Chris, the object of Amelia's adoration, is a charming, outgoing lad of 21 years. He is friend and mentor to Amelia, dazzling her with his worldliness and University-man panache. Of course, their love can never be. Their age gap makes it impossible and besides, he is playing Gatsby to another - a girl who has broken his heart and sentences him to "a lifestyle of soul-wrenching loneliness and sexual frustration." He is, as his sister points out, "pretty passionate about [his] unhappiness." Despite his many bad habits - drinking, drugs and an obsession with playing the "Field" (he capitalizes "the Field" in his diary) - Chris is a good boy. From his ramblings in his diary, we learn that he's a decent chap and I have great hopes that one day he'll be a good man. 
How Amelia tries to hide her feelings for Chris while simultaneously reaching out to him for company and friendship are adorable. Like watching a puppy try to climb down the stairs for the first time. You want her to succeed but are waiting for the tragi-comic tumble of fluff and fur that you are certain will take place. 


I really enjoyed the book. I initially had some reservations because I felt that apart from some sharp observations about how young people learn to love, not much actually happens in the book. But I see now that I was wrong. What was the point of the whole series of events if not for the hero to mature? I think, the story ended before true maturity takes hold - Amelia does learn a few things that will probably lead her to maturity eventually. But I am still waiting for the tumble down the stairs. Nevertheless, I left with the feeling that when the tumble does happen it won't be a bone-crushing one. Both characters will probably be changed by the experience, maybe even mature, but certainly not broken.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥♥

Reading this book was like taking a pleasant walk in the English countryside with your elderly uncle - a slow meandering pace punctuated by your uncle's sharply witty asides delivered periodically as you both bend down to observe a mushrooms growing in the shade of one of the countryside's towering yews. That's what I imagine elderly British gentlemen do during their walks, anyway.


It is the story of a retired Major who feels keenly the loss of the old ways. A fervent traditionalist, he almost surprises himself when he forms a friendship with Mrs. Ali, the keeper of the village sundry shop and a woman of Pakistani descent. The friendship between them develops into a sweet, cozy love and we get to see a man of somewhat rigid beliefs make the brave effort to adapt and change his staunchly held worldview with wonderful dignity.

The story was lovely, maybe a leeeetle bit slow, but the slowness of the pace was more than made up for by how FUNNY the story was. Just little hail stones of prickling observation sprinkled throughout, usually in the Major's "voice", that melted before you can pick them up and hold them in your hand to over-analyze them.

Here are a couple of gems: 

"Perhaps it was the result of evolution, he thought - some adaptive gene that allowed the English to go on making blithe outdoor plans in the face of almost certain rain"

"His face wore the glazed expression of someone calculating how much of a smile to deliver"

"...as I get older, I find myself insisting on my right to be philosophically sloppy"

"...they resembled to halves of a walnut, charming in their wrinkled symmetry"

"He opened his mouth to say that she looked extremely beautiful and deserved armfuls of roses, but the words were lost in committee somewhere, shuffled aside by the parts of his head that worked full-time on avoiding ridicule"

I better stop now or I'll just end up quoting the entire book! 

Ok, ONE more and then I'm really stopping:

"I always thought it important to decide where one would be buried, and then one could sort of work life out backward from there."

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥♥♥

Sick, twisted, wtf-ery. Ye gods, I loved this book!

This isn't a romance novel - far from it - but I read it a few days ago and I can't stop thinking about it so I thought I would just get it all out of my system here.

GF is a woman I wish I was friends with. She has written a book of such diabolical, perverse, purple humor that it leads me to believe she must be a woman of great wit and nonsense. Someone with whom I would very much like to have brunch.

On a very basic level, Gone Girl is about the un-spooling of the marriage between two extremely difficult-to-love people. The meta-story (because we live in times where everything has to have a meta something) is revealed by a series of questions about marriage that one of the main characters asks himself a few times: "Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?"

The main story was about Nick Dunne who comes home one day to discover that his wife, Amy is missing. The circumstances look suspicious and Nick becomes the prime suspect (no surprise here for if we have learned anything from the Crime & Investigation Network - it's always the husband). Nick insists he didn't have anything to do with his wife's disappearance and I spent most of the book being tossed from the for Nick to violently against camps again and again like a poor dead leaf in a storm. I discovered things (horrific, sad, heartbreaking things) about both Nick and Amy along the way that made me feel gut-deep sympathy for both characters. But then as I read on, that sympathy warred furiously with an equally gut-level disgust I felt for the both of them. By the end of it all I was left an exhausted and weak shell of a person with severe stomach pain.

You know when you watch one of those documentaries about space where the camera makes a huge swoop and you feel like you are shooting into deep space, everything around you getting darker and everything you know fading rapidly to a tiny speck behind you? That's how I felt the deeper I got into the book. I started off with a jellylike idea of what happened, and all of a sudden, without warning, the author dropped me into holycowwtf territory and my mind was literally blown. 

The main thing I learned after getting to the intensely uncomfortable ending of this novel is that I guess I don't know anything about people at all. I had brazenly assumed that I had a finely tuned ear and understanding for the inner weirdities of people and characters. I thought, in my utter naivete, that having read a lot of deep books by dead french dudes I knew something about the world - but now I realize that was all just kindergarten stuff. I didn't even have the brain-elasticity to imagine that this type of mind- f#ery could exist. 

My inner goody two shoes hated, HATED the ending. I mean, it was a nightmarish scenario for a person who desperately wants to live in a world where good triumphs over evil. But then there was this sick, grinning devil inside me who experienced a sensual zippety-zap of terrified enjoyment when I read the end that GF offers up. 

Ok I won't say more because its just going to be spoiler-y. Let me just end with this. I thought Gone Girl was a fantastic read. I devoured it in the matter of a day, I didn't sleep and I didn't eat and if I had kids they would be calling child services on me because I just didn't care about anything except getting to the bottom of the mystery. 

The ending, while disturbing, was eminently interesting. I would never have imagined it in a million years, because, as I said earlier, I couldn't have even constructed an imaginary character that screwed up. And the fact that Gillian Flynn did makes me want to meet her, learn from her and make her my friend.