I grew up in a family of story-tellers. In my family, there is no such thing as a yes-or-no question, a simple answer, or a bald fact. You can’t even ask someone to pass the butter without incurring a story, and major holidays always end with the women gathered around the table, weeping with laughter, while our husbands sit in the next room, holding their heads.

Obviously, with so much practice, my family is rich in fine story-tellers, but my aunt Mary Ann Shaffer was the jewel in our crown. What was it about Mary Ann turning a tale? She was one of the wittiest people I ever met, but wit wasn’t the essence of her gift. 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 center 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 the impulse to share it; she told stories so that we, listening, could be delighted with her, and, time and again, she succeeded.

To tell is one thing, to commit to paper is another. For as long as I can remember, Mary Ann was always working on something, but she never completed a book to her own satisfaction, at least not until she embarked upon The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

The story of that embarkation began in 1980, when Mary Ann was in the throes of a fascination with Kathleen Scott, wife of the polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott. In order to write her biography, Mary Ann traveled to Cambridge, England, where her subject’s papers were archived. But when she reached her destination, Mary Ann discovered that the archive consisted primarily of aged bits and notes, scrawled in illegible pencil. Thoroughly disgusted, Mary Ann threw the project over, but she was not yet ready to return home. Instead, for reasons that will always be obscure, she decided to visit to the island of Guernsey, far in the nethermost reaches of the English Channel.

Mary Ann flew there, and of course, drama followed. As her plane landed, what she described as “a terrible fog” arose from the sea and enshrouded the island in gloom. The ferry service came to a halt; the airplanes were grounded. With the dismal clank of a drawbridge pulling to, the last taxi rattled off, leaving her in the Guernsey airport, immured, isolated, and chilled to the bone. (Are you getting the sense of how Mary Ann told a story?). There, as the hours ticked by, she hunkered in the feeble heat of the hand-drier in the men’s restroom (the hand-drier in the women’s restroom was broken), struggling to sustain the flickering flame of life. The flickering flame of life required not only bodily nourishment (candy from vending machines), but spiritual aliment, that is, books. Mary Ann could no more endure a day without reading than she could grow feathers, so she helped herself to the offerings at the Guernsey airport bookstore. In 1980, this bookstore was evidently a major outlet for publishing on the Occupation of the island by the Germans during World War II. Thus, when the fog lifted, Mary Ann left the island, having seen nothing that could be considered a sight, with an armload of books and an abiding interest in Guernsey’s wartime experiences.

Some twenty years passed before Mary Ann, goaded by her writing group, began The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. As the members of the Literary Society found during their ordeal, companionship can help us surmount nearly any barrier, imposed, self-imposed, or imagined.  Likewise, Mary Ann’s writing group, by cajoling, critiquing, admiring, and demanding, sustained her through the obstacle course of creation and across the finish line to her first completed manuscript.

“All I wanted,” Mary Ann once said, “was to write a book that someone would like enough to publish.”  She got what she wanted—and more—for publishers from around the world flocked to buy her book. It was a triumph, of course for her, but for the rest of us long-time Mary Ann-listeners as well. Finally we had proof of what we had known all along—our own personal Scheherazade could beguile the world. We swelled with pride.

But then, just as if we were in some horrible retributive folk tale, the triumph turned, because Mary Ann’s health began to fail. When, shortly thereafter, the book’s editor requested some changes that required substantial rewriting, Mary Ann knew that she did not have the stamina to undertake the work, and she asked me if I would do it, on the grounds that I was the other writer in the family.

Of course I said yes. Writers are rarely the solution to anyone’s problems, and this was a unique occasion to help someone I loved. But to myself I whispered that it was impossible—impossible for me to take on my aunt’s voice, her characters, the rhythm of her plot.

However, there was no help for it; I had to begin. And once I began, I discovered something: it was easy. It was easy because I had grown up on Mary Ann’s tales—they didn’t just come with the butter, they were the butter. They were nourishment. All those years and years when her stories were the wallpaper of my life, when just passing through the dining room would garner me an odd expression or an obscure fact, Mary Ann’s idea of narrative was becoming mine. In the same way that people acquire accents and politics from their surroundings, I acquired stories.

Working on the book, then, was like sitting down with Mary Ann—her characters were people I knew (sometimes literally) and their most irrational actions had a certain familiar logic to me. When Mary Ann passed away, in early 2008, the book was a comfort, because it held her within it. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a testament to Mary Ann’s talent, to be sure, but in the truest way it’s also the embodiment of her generosity.  In it she offers, for our enjoyment, a catalogue of her delights—the oddities that enchanted her, the expressions that entertained her, and above all, the books that she adored.

I think that Mary Ann knew, before she died, that her book was going to be well-received, but no one could ever be entirely prepared for the avalanche of acclaim that greeted its publication. As first the booksellers, then the reviewers, and finally actual readers got their hands on the book, we noticed that their praise often took the same form—the book was quirky, unlike anything else, charming, vivid, witty . . .  In other words, it was like Mary Ann herself.  Suddenly, the rest of the world had a seat at the table where I had been feasting my whole life, and, as with any family party, they clustered around Mary Ann, weeping with laughter—or sorrow—as her stories billowed forth.

Annie Barrows
November 4, 2008