Lovely Literary Layers

If ever a reader was seeking a book built on an excellent cast of characters, this will fit the bill beautifully! It is a book by a consummate storyteller, about a storyteller, and in an entirely unobtrusive but quietly pleasing way, the novel’s structure parallels the protagonist’s search for a novel’s structure. The protagonist, Juliet, is a writer who is trying to write a new book on the back of a recent bestseller success. The author, Mary Ann Shaffer, gives Juliet her same experience:

The seed for this book was planted quite by accident. I had travelled to England to research another book and while there learned of the German occupation of the Channel islands.

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That said, this is not one of those high-falutin, self-conscious, would-be clever novels. Far from it. In fact, it seems to focus on the small and personal and domestic, but set against the political background of the German occupation of Guernsey, a topic which has not occupied much press time or media attention, but which this novel brings to the fore with gentle recounting and heartbreaking detail.  

A word must be said first about the dual-authorship – easiest to explain by quoting from the Afterword by the second author, Annie Barrows:

my family is rich in fine storytellers, but my aunt, Mary Anne Shaffer was the jewel in our crown. […] Her language was lustrous, her timing was exquisite, her delivery was a thing of beauty and a joy forever but none of these reaches to the centre of her charm. That, it seems to me, was her willingness to be delighted by people, their phrases, their frailties, and their fleeting moments of grandeur. Together with her delight was her impulse to share it; she told stories so that the rest of us, listening, could be delighted with her, and, time and again, she succeeded.

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It turns out (alas for readers!) that Mary Anne Shaffer only ever wrote this one book – after Bloomsbury publishing had bought the manuscript, health issues interrupted Shaffer’s ability to finish it, and she asked another writer in her family, niece ‘Annie’ to step in and complete it. Anne Barrows seems to have been the perfect choice,

It was my good fortune to enter into this project armed with a lifetime of my aunt Mary Anne’s stories.

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It must be said that these two writing voices chime together so beautifully that the novel ends up a beautiful, coherent single entity, ringing true, rather than 2 forces at work.  

The protagonist is Juliet Ashton, a woman who is exactly as Annie Barrows in the quote above, has described her own aunt. Juliet, an already best selling author for light hearted war time columns collected into a volume, falls into correspondence with a resident on Guernsey Island, and thereon, is lead into many correspondences with many residents of Guernsey. This is one of those novels told entirely via letters – the letters are beautifully written, each distinctively different in voice and character, presents the reader with a whole host of characters in Juliet’s life and making up this beautifully woven tapestry of stories, and also beautifully timed. Some of the letter writers are literary, highly educated, privileged; others are simpler people, testifying to the horrors visited on Guernsey residents by the occupation but almost as if it were an afterthought or an additional aside. The understating of the horrors lend them even more poignancy – a very effective storyteller’s device, of course, and deployed with considerable skill and acumen by both Juliet and Mary Anne.

One more word must be said about the structure of this novel: Juliet collects many letters from Guernsey residents, but realises this in itself does not make a book; she consults her publisher and patron, who points out that there is a central character in all the letters, one Elizabeth, who was taken from Guernsey to a German concentration camp, but who seems to have touched the life of all those she met and lived with in Guernsey, and it is on Elizabeth, that all the stories can be pegged and structured into a book; likewise too, of course, Mary Anne Shaffer pegged the entire book on Juliet and her correspondences and structure this book. This is a novel by a storyteller, about a storyteller, who is in turn telling the story of yet another storyteller and storymaker. The layers are delicious. 

The characters are drawn with a light, humorous touch, often quirky, idiosyncratic, endearing, touching, brave, generous, heart warming. Even the few malicious ones, although painted with their pomposity and selfishness and damaging effects, are not lampooned. The writing stays light but never trite; and the deprivations and atrocities endured are given voice, but not sensationalised. This is one of those writers who can convey weighty matters without making the reader heavy of heart. The only thing to lament as a reader, is that there will be no further books by this author – a great pity – this one was such a wonderful read. I thoroughly enjoyed every sentence, every page, every letter, and recommended unreservedly.