sttimsbbb

The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie Society, by Annie Barrows & Mary Ann Shaffer

The story and the characters in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society are every bit as intriguing as the book\’s unusual and quirky-sounding title.

Told entirely in the form of letters to and from its characters, the story begins in 1946, shortly after the end of World War II as Europe is slowly emerging from the horrors of that war. In London, writer Juliet Ashton is trying to come up with a subject for her next book when she receives a letter complimenting her on her writing from a stranger, Dawsey Adams. Dawsey is a native of the Island of Guernsey, one of the English Channel Islands near the French coastline. Guernsey was under Nazis occupation.

Dawsey\’s letter sets off an exchange of letters between the two. Eventually other residents of the small island join the exchange, describing the effects of the occupation on their lives. Through the residents\’ letters Julia is introduced to the Guernsey Potato Peel Pie and Literary Society which was initially created as an alibi when the Nazis caught the islanders breaking curfew. The Societyquickly becomes real, banding them together and making them friends as well as survivors.

Some of the residents were not readers, but they came together for companionship and entertain each other with discussions about books. And they share their letters from Julia, who soon becomes so intrigued with her new friends that she takes up temporary residence on Guernsey so that she can meet them face to face and write a book about their experiences.

Julia learns their very real and painful stories about the effect the Nazi occupation has had on their home and their lives. Their letters to her are colorful, sad and very descriptive. We also get to know the Islanders as individuals—courageous, frightened, sometimes funny but always determined to survive. Julia\’s letters to them are thoughtful and wonderfully funny.

In the years the Nazis occupied Guernsey, they tightly controlled every aspect of islanders\’ lives. They were cruel conquers, rationing their food and the fuel they needed for heat and cooking, robbing their vegetable gardens and forcing the islanders to live in constant fear.

Islanders shared rations and helped each other in every possible way with medical aid and whatever else they needed to survive—including their sense of humor. Together they

lived through the ever-present cold, dampness, relentless hunger and very real fear of the Nazis. And a gentle love story quietly develops.

With little notice, Guernsey\’s children were rounded up and shipped to England. Having their children sent to another country, frightened and alone, to unknown caregivers and for an indefinite length of time was a terrible heartbreak for the Islander, who could only hope that at least their children would be safer.

The book gives us an all too realistic picture of the Nazi occupation of Guernsey. But we learn even more about courage, strong friendships and the importance of both. And the story is told with warmth and humor. The letter-writing format is a clever, surprisingly effective and believable way to get to know the courageous, creative, sometimes quirky residents of Guernsey and to see how they struggled to survive and were effected by the Nazi occupation of their island. —Gail Stilwill

NOTE: The original author, Mary Ann Shaffer, died before she was able to complete the book, after spending years researching material. Her niece, Annie Barrows, was able to pick up where Shaffer left off and compete the book. It was well worth the efforts of both writers.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander

This book is an important, but tough, read. Important because we need to know the extent of our massive prison population and how it got that way. Important because we need to understand that mass incarceration, in the name of the war on drugs and “law and order,” has been applied discriminatorily against our black and brown youth, particularly boys and young men. Important because mass incarceration is the new face of a very, very old attempt to keep black and brown people from being full members of society. Important because those of us who are part of the white majority need to see the face of our society from the perspective of those who are not white.

The book is tough because the conclusions are inescapable. It’s tough because well-meaning Christian white Americans have let this happen under our eyes. It’s tough because our response, if it is to combat this problem at its root, must be far more than simply revising our mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

Michelle Alexander brings incredible research to these points, carefully laying out facts and figures from her experiences as the director of ACLU’s Racial Justice Project inNorthern California and as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and as a professor of law at Ohio State University.

She argues that, contrary to what most of us want to believe, “colorblindness” is part of the problem and not part of the solution. In her final chapter, entitled “The Fire This Time,” she challenges us to rethink denial, to talk openly about race, and to adopt an “all of us or none” attitude toward justice.

Like most of our societal problems today, this one is complex. Solutions will not be based on 30-second sound bites, but on systemic work to rid ourselves and our institutions of implicit bias.

Not an easy read. Yes, a tough one. But one that’s necessary.—Jeanie Smith

South of Broad, by Pat Conroy

The saga takes place in the wealthy and prestigious neighborhood called South of Broad, in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. The main character, Leopold Bloom King is 18, awkward, painfully shy, friendless and finally beginning to recover from the traumatic suicide of his older brother and hero.

Leopold’s (Leo’s) recovery is especially challenging since Leopold found his brother’s body—and since their mother continues to be furious and verbally abusive to Leo because his brother, and clearly her favorite son, died instead of him.

After years of counseling and a stay in a mental health institute being treated for depression, Leo is lonely and adrift, but he also is friendly, out-going and more than ready to make friends. He finds them in a tightly-knit group of high school misfits: his new neighbors – the exotically beautiful, talented and troubled twins, Sheba and Trevor Poe; Ike Johnson, the son of Leo’s new African American football coach (a first in the recently desegregated south); Niles and Starla Whitehead, a teenage brother and sister, recently arrived in town and already in trouble with the law; and three South of Broad Blueblood teens, Chad and Fraser Rutledge and Molly Huger. Surprisingly (strangely perhaps) Leo meets and becomes friends with all of them in one, very eventful, day.

South Carolina’s legacy of racism and class divisions are the background of the story, which weaves its way through two decades of the friendship that binds them together through good and bad marriages, hard-won successes and devastating problems. Finally their friendship is tested in an unimaginable set of circumstances. Then, with no warning at all, right out of the blue, comes the twisted ending. For me, this was the final piece of a story that already become over-the-top unbelievable.

———–

Full disclosure: I was part of a very small minority of my fellow Books, Brew and Banter club members who did not particularly like this book. For me, the story became a soap opera, overdone from the plot, to the dialogue, to the over-the-top writing.

I know that Conroy is an award-winning, respected author of long-standing. A number of reviewers said this book was not one of Conroy’s best. I’ll take them, and my fellow Book Club members, at their word and try another of his books.

—Gail Stilwill