The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

It has been years since I found a book this enjoyable.  It tells the story of Juliet Ashton, a London-based author who receives an unexpected letter in 1946 from a man living on the English Channel island of Guernsey. Before long, Juliet is corresponding with a half-dozen or so islanders, and friendships develop.  Over the course of some months, Juliet discovers what happened to the islanders during the Nazi occupation, and how the individuals and their community are going about rebuilding their lives and repairing their island.

The first thing to note about this book is that it told entirely through letters, telegrams and diaries.  I thought that this storytelling device would quickly become wearisome, but I was wrong.  The authors were able to imbue each piece of correspondence with the spirit of its writer:  old London friends are warm and open and supportive of each other; new Guernsey friends are tentative and mistrustful in varying degrees, but once the ice breaks, each blossoms in their own unique way.

But perhaps the genius of this book resides in the use of levity to counteract the gravity of the stories regarding the Nazi occupation without trivialising it.  The authors do not pull any punches about the darkest deeds of human beings; but as they have laid the foundations of the story on the uplifting natures of intelligent, witty and loving human beings, the weight of the subject matter of the occupation does not seem to press as heavily upon the reader as it might otherwise have done.

It may be fair to say that the finale of the book does not live up to the high standards of all that went before it.  But so what!  Overall, it is a splendid and enjoyable book.

I read the Allan and Unwin e-book.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

I liked the ending of this book, but I am not sure it was worth the journey to get there.  Seeing that the story takes the form of an American road trip, I can't help thinking there is some irony in the experience.

Shadow is a jailbird.  He gets paroled early because his wife has died in tragic circumstances.  As he travels across the United States to get home, he meets a mysterious man who calls himself Wednesday, and he receives an offer he can easily refuse but doesn't.  Shadow soon finds himself enmeshed in conflict and conspiracy on a cosmic scale.  His life falls apart as his business with Wednesday takes him up and down the length of America.  Perhaps it is all a grand joke, but one that is going to blow up in Shadow's face.

I haven't read Gaiman before, but I have experienced some of his work: the movie Stardust (based on the novel of the same name) and an episode of Doctor Who penned by Gaiman. I enjoyed them for the light touch and sense of whimsy they both contained.  American Gods, although it does have humour sprinkled throughout, is a far darker work.  Murder, death and betrayal are there in large doses.  And Gaiman does explore where the head and heart of modern America may reside nowadays, and it is a bleak vision.

My main problem with American Gods is that so much of it neither advances the plot nor develops the characters.  There is a lot of repetition that serves no real purpose that I could perceive other than to make a long book longer.  Its saving grace, to my mind, is the way Gaiman uses a certain motif throughout the book and then turns it into the metaphor for the denouement of the work.

Some times less is more, and vice versa.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

The main part of this book deals with a week in the life of a 15 year-old boy called Chris.  Chris lives in Swindon, England, with his widowed father.  The remarkable feature of Chris' story is the fact that he has Asperger syndrome (AS).  

Despite the physical and emotional limitations AS places on him, Chris is highly intelligent (especially gifted in mathematics), articulate and has cultivated a wide range of interests.  Chris is as perfectly candid about the difficulties he has as a result of AS as he is about his other interests; and as he tells his tale, we get a vivid insight into his simple and yet complex inner-world.

He begins his story with his discovery of the body Wellington, a neighbour's pet dog.  Wellington has clearly been murdered, and Chris (being a big fan of Sherlock Holmes) decides to investigate this curious incident.  Big mistake.  Chris is just about to have his world blown apart.

I'll be brief.  I was enjoying this book a lot.  Chris was an engaging and interesting narrator. I liked what he had to say about his interests, and it was fascinating to see the world through his eyes.  He was able to give me a new appreciation of things that I either dismiss or take for granted.  

It was all going very well, and then something happened.  All the charm disappeared from the narrative, never to return. The characters became caricatures, and dysfunctional ones at that.  Very unpleasant and unappealing. 

It is hard to understand how either the author or his editors allowed this to happen, but they did.  All I will say is: A+ for the first two-thirds of the book, F for the rest.