The Guernsey (*Possible Spoilers--BEWARE**)

Now that we've moved on to our next novel, I feel like I can talk about our previous book without spoiling any info. If you haven't read the book, but you intend to, you might want to stop reading now. I don't think I'm about to spoil, but ya never know what might slip out. At least, I never do.

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society:
In order to avoid retelling the story, I'll try to keep my thoughts directed strictly on my opinions and not telling you the story. As I've stated before, this book is written in the format of an epistolary. One of our book clubbers in particular did not like this format at all, although I feel compelled to point out that she *did* enjoy the story while not enjoying the format. The majority; however, seemed to like it. I personally liked this format because it allowed a lot of character and plot movement without seeming like helter skelter-willy nilly gear changing. For me, it also created the allusion that these were real people. One of the clubbers commented that she felt like she had found someone's private stash of old letters and had secretly read them. We all agreed on that point.
The novel contains so much accurate, historical information. And when you couple that with the feeling that these were 'real' people and 'real' letters, it just made the novel reach out and grab you that much more. Along those lines, we all thought that it was quite a shame that people do not correspond in a such a way anymore, but that's a post in itself. I was amazed at how the book combined the historical aspect of the German occupation and the everyday lives of the characters within those correspondences. As we discussed tonight, this work of fiction seemed so real that it was almost like reading a non-fiction novel. It seems as if you could G**gle any of the characters and find that they had actually existed in 1946.
Of course, our clubbers did have some vaguely negative opinions on some aspects of the book, but I will keep those under lid....because I can. I'd rather you read the book and discover for yourself what we already know about it. Once you do that, drop me a note! I seriously want to know what you think and would be happy to report to the rest of the clubbers on your behalf at our online site where we communicate between meetings!
So read!!