Highland Angel Book Club

Last month, we decided to start a book club at Highland Angel HQ and our very first novel was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows. We've read it, we've reviewed it and we loved it!


Below are a few questions about the book and our own thoughts - if you'd like to share your views, please get in touch using the Comments facility. If you'd like to join our group (the more the merrier - please do!) our next book will be The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell. Find out more after the Q&As.

1. What was it like to read a novel composed entirely of letters?
We all enjoyed reading a book of letters - it offered an insight into the characters' personalities which prose could not and the different tones of the letters were fantastic.
2. Which is your favourite member of the society? Whose life was most changed by their membership?
We've narrowed it down to Dawsey, Juliet and Sidney (if being an honorary member counts). Juliet and Dawsey's lives changed most we think - Dawsey for his growing confidence, Juliet for discovering a new life and both for meeting each other.
3. Is there anything about the book you would change?
We were not fully convinced by Juliet's decision to adopt Kit - it wasn't a necessary conclusion to the story.
4. Would you recommend it to a friend?
Yes! Some of us wouldn't read it again, some of us already have!

The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell:
A gorgeously written story of love and motherhood, this is a tour de force from one of our most acclaimed and best loved novelists. When the bohemian, sophisticated Innes Kent turns up by chance on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot wait any longer for her life to begin, and leaves for London. There, at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, she carves out a new life for herself, with Innes at her side. In the present day, Elina and Ted are reeling from the difficult birth of their first child. Elina, a painter, struggles to reconcile the demands of motherhood with sense of herself as an artist, and Ted is disturbed by memories of his own childhood, memories that don't tally with his parents' version of events. As Ted begins to search for answers, so an extraordinary portrait of two women is revealed, separated by fifty years, but connected in ways that neither could ever have expected.