I cannot express my complete and succumbing adoration of this book. In fact, I am now currently debating which book to bump from my top ten list to make way for Guernsey and all its charm. I think it will trump either Kafka or Hemingway (shock!).
I devoured this polylogic epistolary novel (oh how I do love a good epistolary novel) in less than 12 hours, and that is on a work day including me making dinner!!! Ha! I picked it up during end-of-level testing at noon and have finished just now- much chagrined by two facts: 1) that I waited a full week and half with this novel in my possession before flipping the cover, and 2) if I had waited longer, the joy of it wouldn't be finitely over (you see, the author has died- we may expect no trendy sequel... I say trendy because it is rare to find a best selling novel these days without one).
Its cleverness lies in quotes you can't run past your eyes without snatching them up for your life's motto. For example: One has to wonder where "...there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers" (page 10) and "the problem with good books is that they ruin any chance of enjoying the bad ones" (at least that the jist of it, page 40-something) have been all our lives!
Unfortunately, and as a great rarity, I have borrowed rather than purchased this book... a rarity that will quickly be remedied as I spotted it on the (gasp) pulp fiction table of Costco just this week (the nerve!).
Read it. You'll love it. And if you don't, we may never agree on one thing again.
THE JIST: Fictional account based on the real occupation of the [English] Channel Islands by Nazi's during WWII... it's written entirely in letters (that means epistolary...and if you remotely liked Ella Minnow Pea, you'll love this), but it is mostly about literature and how the love of prose can aide any personality in trying times. It is witty, clever, and I am absolutely in LOVE with the characters {but especially Isola- the goat owning, stout scalp-reading, cross-eyed apothicary of Guernsay}. I so wish I lived next to her.
2 comments:
Nicole, you are a brilliant writer. I have a feeling that time spent with bambino could be easily multi-tasked as a career as a literary critic. Thanks for starting this blog.
Darn I need to read some books. Good thing you have them all organized here for me. Now the problem is, if I pick one up and it's any good, I can't put it down and everything from dinner, laundry and dishes, to my personal hygiene, suffer profoundly. Ugh, but you make me want to read all of these...what to do, what to do.
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