Missing Guernsey

It's been a very long time since I've finished a book and felt like I'd just lost my best friends. For months I put off reading the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society just on the basis of the title alone. What a snob I am. This imaginative tale by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (how on earth do people collaborate on a work of fiction?) takes readers to the island of Guernsey off Great Britain shortly after the German occupation circa 1946. It is there that a group of friends walking through town after curfew are accosted by German soldiers and forced to quickly make up an excuse for their offense. Fast thinking Elizabeth, the strong center of this outstanding novel, invents the book club on the spot and thus a literary society is born.

Across the channel, writer Juliet Ashton, tiring of her weekly newspaper column, is searching for an idea for a novel when she receives a letter from Guernsey resident Dawsey Adams. Their ensuing correspondence opens up a whole new world to Juliet as Dawsey encourages other island residents to write to Juliet about their experiences under the Germans. Juliet, in turn, convinces her editor Sydney that there's a book to be found in the simple lives of the resilient and resourceful Guernsey folk. Eventually Juliet travels from London to Guernsey, settling in to the missing Elizabeth's cottage, becoming a surrogate mother to Elizabeth's daughter Kit and an indispensable member of the community.

A novel in letters particularly lends itself to audio presentation and I can't recommend enough the downloadable version of this book. Each character is represented by a different actor and each takes on a life of his own. In lesser hands these people could become simplified exaggerations of personality types, the nosy neighbor who finds fault with everyone, the goody two-shoes, the reserved farmer, the gay intellectual, even the pretentious, wealthy American Mark, who assumes he can lure Juliet away from her work with the promise of a soft life of dances and dinners. However, in this production, the people became so real, so honest that I was ready to go online and book myself a trip to the Channel Islands! Truly a wonderful reading experience.

What's great for the environment - commuting only 6 miles to work - is a real setback to a person who relies on cd books to complete her non-stop reading marathons. I have been living with Barbara Walters now for months and, while it's been a terrific, eye-opening experience, I'm ready to move on. Audition is a long, long (but never boring) book, as it must be since it covers pretty much the entire history of the twentieth century. Don and I have often had the discussion about how prevelent discrimination against women has been and remains. When I tell him that I've rarely felt it directed at me personally, he's amazed. However, that's not to say that I don't know our history very well and don't appreciate those who have broken barriers and paved the way. In fact I worry a great deal about the young women today who seem to take these strides for granted.

Listening to Barbara, who I assure you never feels sorry for herself or dwells on past injustices, tell of the despicable on air treatment she received from Harry Reasoner or the years that she worked without an agent for a salary less than half what male equivalents were making brings it all home to me. Her extraordinary career, the guts and courage it takes to make it in a man's field, the amazing interviews she's landed with every major political player of the past 60 years, is a story worth listening to, so I'll hang in there through the 19 disks even though I've got three other cd books waiting patiently for me in the back seat. To sum up her book in one sentence; "living well is the best revenge!"