The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society   is a Netflix historical drama based on the 2008 historical best-selling novel of the same name by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Set on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel, a year after the end of the Second World War, we see Julie Ashton (the talented Lily James –Lady Rose in “Downton Abbey”), a London author writing under a male pen name. She yearns for a writing project in her own voice.

Ashton gets a letter from Dawsey Adams, a Guernsey pig farmer, who has a used book with her name and address. Exchanging letters with residents on the island of Guernsey, which endured Nazi occupation, Ashton accepts an invitation to read to the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book club that was actually part of the underground resistance.

Intrigued by how much books mean to this isolated community, how reading kept everyone sane during the war, Ashton decides this book club and its history would be the perfect subject for a London Times article, the writing project of her dreams. But all is not as it seems. There is betrayal, a romance or two, and escape into the world of books for solace.

The original Guernsey novel is completely in a “letters” or epistolary format, mostly letters between Ashton and Adams, so the visual and sense of place is severely lacking. The film’s best moments, on the other hand, provide a keen sense of 1946 island life in a small British community. There is a sense of community after suffering a shared loss during the Nazi occupation.

The Guernsey book club is similar in feel and sense of identity and community as “Downton Abbey”. We see the bravery of the underground as they resisted the Nazis and yet we come to understand the price of war for all involved and the need for forgiveness.

A feel-good movie with three other “Downton Abbey” actors in key roles, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is entertaining, although not as engaging as the “Downton Abbey” PBS series.