BOOKPATHS

Guernsey

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (New York: The Dial Press, 2009)

Told in letters, this sweet novel more than accomplishes what the author had hoped, that “these characters and their story shed some light on the sufferings and strength of the people of the Channel Islands during the German Occupation” and “that my book will illuminate the belief that love of art – be it poetry, storytelling, painting, sculpture, or music – enables people to transcend any barrier man has yet devised.”

The four of us – Amelia, Kit, Dawsey, and I – rode to Amelia’s farm in Dawsey’s cart, while everyone else walked.  It wasn’t far except in terms of landscape, for we moved from St. Peter Port out into the countryside.  There are rolling pasturelands, but they end suddenly at cliffs, and all around is the moist salt smell of the sea.  As we drove, the sun set and the mist rose.  You know how sounds become magnified in the fog?  Well, it was like that – every bird’s chirp was weighty and symbolic.  Clouds boiled up over the cliff-sides, and the fields were swathed in grey by the time we reached the manor house, but I saw ghostly shapes that I think were the cement bunkers built by the Todt workers. – from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

Visit Guernsey

Guernsey

Heidi Benson talks with Annie Barrow, co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, “the runaway hit of the summer.”

“As the ferry approached St. Peter Port on a gray day in June, Berkeley author Annie Barrows held her breath. It was her first view of Guernsey, the English Channel island where - in her imagination, at least - she had spent more than a year. ‘Is everything I'd made up going to be true?’ she wondered. The boat swung around, and there it was. ‘The old fortress hove into view,’ she recalled, ‘and I saw the city rising, exactly as it was supposed to, in terraced layers.’" – from “Literary Labor of Love Gave Way to ‘Guernsey,’” by Heidi Benson, San Francisco Chronicle

Victor Hugo Trail, Guernsey

Guernsey is the “second largest of the Channel Islands. It is 30 miles west of Normandy, Fr., and roughly triangular in shape. With Alderney, Sark, Herm, Jethou, and associated islets, it forms the Bailiwick of Guernsey. Its capital is St. Peter Port.” Guernsey a British Crown dependency. (Encyclopedia Brittanica Online)

Guernsey offers a Victor Hugo Trail that includes Hauteville House, his former home, and other sites connected to the author. Expelled from France in 1851, Hugo spent most of his exile on Guernsey, writing some of his most famous works while living on the island, including Les Misérables, before triumphantly returning to France in 1870.

Guernsey is a bookpather’s dream. Visit “Guernsey’s Official Victor Hugo Website” and begin to plan a journey.