The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“Why am I so melancholy? I should be delighted at the prospect of reading Izzy to an entranced audience. You know how I love talking about books, and you know how I adore receiving compliments. I should be thrilled. But the truth is that I’m gloomy—gloomier than I ever was during the war. Everything is broken, Sophie: the roads, the buildings, the people. Especially the people.”

This passage is indicative of The Persisting Effects of War in Britain. Though the official end to the war came and went over four months ago, so too has the initial jubilation of victory. Instead, what Britain—and the world in general—must contend with is a different kind of hardship: rebuilding everything that has been destroyed and grieving all that has been lost.

“Charles Lamb made me laugh during the German Occupation, especially when he wrote about the roast pig. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society came into being because of a roast pig we had kept secret from the German soldiers, so I feel a kinship to Mr. Lamb.”

Here, the authors demonstrate how literature can be endlessly relevant to a multitude of contexts and how, in turn, this relevance can connect individuals over space and time. Though they are more than 100 years apart, Lamb’s words still affect Dawsey and warm his heart.

“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.”

Though books have no agency, the authors nevertheless intimate that readers can draw meaning from the stories they read. As each reader defines this meaning, a network is built wherein all readers are tied to one another through their connection to a given book—which is the implied connection here between Dawsey and Juliet.