Book thirty-seven: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

What a delightful read. I thought the novelty of the format would grow tiresome but it did not. In fact, the entertaining letters, with the occasional short telegram thrown in, helped speed the novel along to its conclusion, where Juliet's lament on stories ending with an engagement only serves to peak our curiosity about what comes next for her and Mr. Dawsey. The story within the story focuses on the island and its people and how they survived during the war. How clever of Elizabeth to so quickly and believably tell a lie to the soldiers that find her out after curfew one evening. And how lucky it is that this ragtag group of characters found each other.

Excerpt 1:

"Of all the things that happened during the war, this one - making your children go away to try to keep them safe - was surely the most terrible. I don't know how they endured it. It defies the animal instinct to protect your young. I see myself becoming bearlike around Kit. Even when I'm not actually watching her, I'm watching her. If she's in any sort of danger (which she often is, given her taste in climbing), my hackles rise - I didn't even know I had hackles before - and I run to rescue her. When her enemy, the parson's nephew, threw plums at her, I roared at him. And through some queer sort of intuition, I always know where she is, just as I know where my hands are - and if I didn't, I should be sick with worry. This is how the species survives, I suppose, but the war threw a wrench in all that. How did the mothers of Guernsey live, not knowing there their children were? I can't imagine."

26 down, plus 11.