We write a lot about authors in Baristaville, but this story a success story about a literary agent, Glen Ridge resident Liza Dawson. The book she discovered several years ago, "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" (Dial Press, $22), came out July 29 to glowing reviews and recommendations by Barnes & Noble and Indie Bound, and then clocked in at #5 on the New York Times Bestseller List last week.
Full disclosure: Liza Dawson is a dear friend. Still, I am hardly alone in saying this is a very charming book, with a charming backstory behind it. An epistolary novel about the German occupation of one of the channel islands during WWII, "Guernsey" was inspired by Mary Ann Shaffer's 1976 visit to the island. Fogged in and stranded at the airport, Shaffer -- a librarian and Anglophile -- read the airport's entire bookstore inventory, which included diaries from the period. "She became completely hooked," says Dawson. "She clearly at heart was always British."
Although Dawson was charmed by the manuscript, she felt the plot needed work, and gave Shaffer suggestions that led to several rewrites. When Shaffer began to lose her memory, her niece, author Annie Barrows, was brought in to help finish the job. Sadly, Shaffer died in February, just months before the book came out.
Of all the many successes "Guernsey" has achieved, Dawson said the absolute peak was selling the British rights. "I think the most exciting thing was when the English fell in love with it."
The book is a natural for book groups. Its subject is a book club itself, which helped get the islanders through their occupation.
And here's a little taste:
7th February, 1946Dear Mr. Reynolds,
All right--Monday, Claridge's, seven.
I do have a telephone. It's in Oakley Street under a pile of rubble that used to be my flat. I'm only sub-letting here, and my landlady, Mrs. Olive Burns, possesses the sole telephone on the premises. If you would like to chat with her, I can give you her number.
Yours sincerely,
Juliet Ashton
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While I wish Ms. Barrows and Shaffer's book well (surely they deserve some congrats along with their agent, no?), the "original" author apparently considers her British at heart even as residents of the Channel Islands do not.
It's a complicated relationship, but basically the Channel Islands do not recognize the Queen as sovereign, merely as their "Duke," and the islands themselves technically remain part of the Duchy of Normandy. Nor are they even represented in Parliament. The legal system is also quite different.
I was on Guernsey some years ago. To call it "pokey" is to be kind, but it was also a very peaceful and friendly place. Full of folks with unfamiliar-sounding acceints, too.
There was a Masterpiece Theater series a few years ago about the German occupation. Interesting, even with the very cliched cultured, non-butcher German officer character who himself just wants the war to end soon so he can get back to his own family, but in conflict with the equally inevitable party member fanatic.