(Allen & Unwin, $35)This could just about be the perfect New Zealand Woman’s Weekly Book Club book. Although it’s set at the end of WWII, it’s about a young woman looking for her way in the world so should appeal to both the gals who are there now and the ones who were there then. Also, the location is Guernsey in the Channel Islands which I, for one, did not realise were occupied by the Nazis for the entire war and as a result totally cut off from the rest of the world. No mail on or off the island was even allowed so the islanders lived in a total vacuum. How strange would that be in this day and age of being connected to everyone and everything, all the time, no matter how much you don’t want to be?
The book is cleverly written as a series of letters that the young woman (Juliet), who is a writer, exchanges with her publisher, her best friend, her fiancé and the islanders she becomes entranced with as she researches a story. Juliet will have you in absolute stitches and is the delightful invention of author Mary Ann Shaffer, who is a story in herself.
Mary Ann became interested in Guernsey after being stranded there in 1976 when a thick fog descended and all boats and planes were forbidden to leave. As she waited for the fog to lift, warming herself under the hand-dryer in the men’s restroom, she read all the books in the Guernsey airport bookstore and so began her fascination with the German occupation. Encouraged by her book group, the 70-something wrote this gem of a novel, but she died before it was completed. Her niece, Annie Barrows, helped her finish it, and for that we should all be deeply grateful.
A funny book set in an untapped new ‘world’ with relevance to modern times, written in short chapters by a woman with a fascinating story of her own. Just about, as I say, perfect!
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