Genre: Historical fiction
Series: Standalone
Page Count: 280
Publication Year: 2008
Publisher: The Dial Press
Summary: A girl forms a connection with a book club created during the German occupation of Guernsey.
I get what this book is trying to accomplish. It’s a heartwarming tale of resilience during tribulation and the aftershocks of said tribulation. I came out of it feeling cool indifference.
Here’s what I did like:
The story, at least in theory. Writing letters, forming book clubs and making friends, all with a backdrop of history, sounds good. But good ideas can so easily fail.
The history. I’m not an expert on WWII and never gave the slightest thought to how it affected the Channel Islands. This book gave a decent picture of the time through secondhand accounts and, while I’m not going to seek out other books on the subject, I’m glad to know the bare facts.
Despite the epistolary format, I could see Guernsey, which is a neat trick when there’s no natural way to describe the surroundings.
Due to the format, it’s easy and fast to read.
Now for what I didn’t like:
The letter format. It’s unrealistic. There’s no way that everything included in the letters would come up naturally in personal correspondence. I know for clarity’s sake you have to spell out details the reader is in the dark on. But I wanted more vagueness. Let me deduce things! For example, I wrote my sister a thank you letter telling her the gift would go on a shelf at the foot of my bed. She and I know that my bed is six feet off the floor, supported on three sides by the walls. In this book, they probably would have described that detail. It annoyed me how they frequently included details that they all know about (there’s one in particular, but it’s spoilers), but have to say again for our benefit.
All that is a result of this book telling instead of showing. I realize letter format doesn’t offer a lot of wiggle room. But I’d rather wonder what something means than have the answer slap me in the face, repeatedly. I wanted a bit more creativity in how information was revealed.
Another thing, several times someone would say, “And now I’m going to tell you about this,” and then tell me. You don’t have to announce you’re changing the topic; that’s what paragraphs are for.
Just a casual observation, how much money would they have spent on postage?
A big problem was Juliet, the protagonist. She’s described as having no common sense, throwing dishes around, and being a nice person. Everyone loves her and she’s delightful to be around. Give me strength. First of all, someone who has no common sense is a terrible choice for a protagonist. Her folly didn’t come across in everything she did, but something happens near the end of the book and she’s confused and I’m like, “It’s so obvious. Where is your head?” I’ve read books where a defining trait of someone is their clumsiness. I guess the author is thinking it’ll make their character endearing and so realistic. No. It’s not cute; it just makes you look like a careless klutz. People who are labelled as “nice” have no lasting substance. Give me substance or give me a different person.
The majority of the book is from Juliet’s perspective and her repetitive observations got stale. Since I didn’t learn anything wonderfully unique by reading letters from other people, perhaps the book should’ve been in first person.
Speaking of persons…the whole cast flopped like dying fish. I distinguished a few people but for the most part they all write with the same voice and blur together. It’s either happy-go-lucky or war is bad. Okay, what about everything in between? The two main men, Sidney and Dawsey, didn’t have starkly different voices compared to the women. Dawsey’s second letter to Juliet begins with, “ Your book came yesterday! You are a nice lady and I thank you with all my heart.” I know Dawsey isn’t a writer (like Juliet) but who thinks up sentences like that and then writes them to a stranger?
There’s this other girl who features prominently in the story. I didn’t care a fig about her. But of course everyone loved her to bits and she touched so many lives and they all looked up to her and isn’t she wonderful? I can’t share much about her that isn’t spoilers but I will say it’s hard to believe someone that young could accomplish so much and command such love.
In the end I didn’t hate it enough to always remember my rage. I clearly didn’t love it. But it doesn’t have an equal amount of likes and dislikes for me to give it three stars and call it a day.
If you like cutesy books that touch on heavyweight matters but ultimately turn into love stories and have shallow characters, you’ll probably enjoy this. The movie should take care of most of my issues, so maybe I’ll try that.
I keep thinking the title starts with “The Literary Guernsey.” This book is not about intelligent cows.
Check out my rating here.