The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: Book vs. Movie

SPOILERS FOR BOTH THE BOOK AND THE MOVIE!

I loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, so after finishing the book I immediately watched the 2018 film adaptation. I was particularly curious about how they were going to adapt an epistolary novel because such a large part of the first half consists entirely of Juliet exchanging letters with people she has never met.

The film's solution is understandable. It gets Juliet to Guernsey much faster.

Unfortunately, that one decision changes almost everything about the emotional structure of the story.

The film is not a bad movie. On its own, it is a beautifully made historical romantic drama with a lovely cast, and there are elements I enjoyed. As an adaptation, though, I think it loses a lot of what made the novel special because it shifts the focus away from the occupation, the Literary Society and Juliet's gradual discovery of a family. Instead, it builds the story much more strongly around two things: the mystery of what happened to Elizabeth McKenna and the romance between Juliet and Dawsey Adams.

Those things matter in the book too. They simply are not the whole book.

Juliet arrives on Guernsey as a stranger

This is probably the most fundamental change.

In the novel, Juliet begins corresponding with Dawsey and the other members of the Society months before she ever travels to Guernsey. One letter leads to another until she gradually knows an entire community. By the time she decides to visit them, she is not travelling somewhere to interview strangers for an article. She is travelling to meet her friends.

They are equally excited to meet her. Elizabeth's cottage is prepared for her before she arrives. The Society members already know Juliet through her letters. Isola recognizes her partly because Juliet has arranged to make herself identifiable and practically launches herself at her in delight.

That matters because the book's first half establishes Guernsey as Juliet's emotional home before it becomes her physical home.

The movie removes most of that process. Juliet travels to Guernsey relatively early because she becomes interested in the Literary Society while working on an article about reading. The islanders do not really know her. They are suspicious of her questions, particularly anything connected with Elizabeth. Instead of arriving among people who already think of her as a friend, Juliet has to gradually gain their trust.

That creates more conventional dramatic tension for a film, but I think it weakens the found family story enormously.

In the novel, Juliet does not simply discover a charming island community after she arrives. She builds relationships through writing first. The letters themselves are important. Books connect Dawsey and Juliet, then letters connect Juliet with the Society, and those connections eventually reshape her entire life.

The movie turns Elizabeth into a mystery

Elizabeth McKenna is enormously important in both versions, but the book and film use her very differently.

In the novel, Juliet learns quite early that Elizabeth was arrested and deported to a camp. Everyone is waiting for news. The uncertainty is painful because nobody knows whether she survived, but her absence is not a secret the islanders are deliberately keeping from Juliet.

Instead, Elizabeth slowly emerges through people's memories. Someone tells Juliet one story about her. Someone else remembers another. Juliet hears how the Literary Society began because Elizabeth invented it as an excuse after they were caught breaking curfew. She learns about people Elizabeth helped. She learns about her relationship with Christian, the German doctor who became Kit's father. Even apparently unrelated occupation stories often contain Elizabeth somewhere in the background. Eventually Juliet realizes that Sidney has been right about her proposed book needing a central figure. She already has one. Elizabeth is the thread connecting the stories.

The film takes that idea and makes it much more literal. The islanders initially avoid explaining where Elizabeth is. They are reluctant to talk about her arrest. Juliet begins investigating what happened and stays on the island partly because she wants answers. It gives the film a mystery structure that the book never really needs.

I understand why. A two hour movie needs a strong narrative spine, particularly when adapting a novel made from dozens of letters and anecdotes. Elizabeth provides one. But making Elizabeth's fate a mystery also means many of the smaller occupation stories disappear, and those stories were some of my favourite parts of the novel.

The occupation becomes background rather than the subject

This was my biggest disappointment.

The novel taught me a tremendous amount about the German occupation of Guernsey because Juliet keeps collecting people's stories. We hear about hunger, evacuated children, curfews, German soldiers, collaborators, forced labourers, rationing, animals being euthanized, fortifications, resistance and dozens of tiny acts of survival. Some stories are funny. Some are horrifying. Some are both.

There is the man who passes himself off as a lord. There are stories about people irritating German soldiers, people smuggling things, people helping one another, people betraying one another and people surviving situations that would otherwise never appear in a conventional war narrative. These anecdotes make Guernsey feel inhabited.

They also make Elizabeth vivid because she repeatedly appears in them. She helps somebody. She invents something. She stands up for someone. She makes a frightened person laugh. By the time we learn how she died, we already understand exactly why she died that way. Elizabeth cannot see cruelty happening and do nothing.

The film loses much of this texture because it has limited time and because its attention is elsewhere.

As a result, the occupation becomes more like the historical backdrop to Elizabeth and Juliet's stories rather than a story in itself.

The book gives the German characters much more moral complexity

This is connected to the previous change, but I think it deserves separate attention because it was one of the aspects of the book I appreciated most.

The novel never minimizes the horrors of Nazi occupation. People are imprisoned, deported, starved and killed. Forced labourers suffer terribly. Elizabeth dies in a concentration camp.

At the same time, the book distinguishes between the Nazi system and every individual German person caught inside it.

Some German soldiers are cruel. Some exploit their position. Others quietly help islanders. Some are young men who are themselves starving by the end of the occupation. There are moments when German soldiers deliberately allow food or fuel to fall where local children can retrieve it. There are individuals who provide medical help. Even when Red Cross supplies finally arrive for the starving islanders, the occupying soldiers are forbidden from taking any of it, even though they are hungry too. Christian, Kit's father, is the clearest example. He is German, but he is also a kind man whom Elizabeth genuinely loves.

The book also includes islanders who behave terribly. Some collaborate. One person's betrayal contributes directly to Elizabeth's arrest.

Its point is not that both sides were equally responsible for what happened. They obviously were not. Its point is that being born on one side or the other does not automatically tell us what kind of individual person someone is.

The film retains Christian as a good German, and Dawsey at one point acknowledges that the island became a kind of prison for everybody, but much of the wider nuance disappears.

Amelia is also changed into someone with a much stronger personal hatred of the Germans, partly because of another major alteration involving Jane.

Amelia and Jane are connected

The film combines and rearranges several characters, which is completely normal for an adaptation with a large cast, but some of those changes create odd consequences.

In the novel, Amelia Maugery is not Jane's mother. Amelia had a son of her own, Ian, who died in the war. Jane was Eli's mother.

The film makes Jane Amelia's daughter, which gives Amelia a much more direct emotional connection to Elizabeth, Kit and the German occupation.

Jane's death is changed too.

In the book, Jane is already experiencing a difficult pregnancy when the children are evacuated. She cannot leave Guernsey because she is on bed rest, so Elizabeth remains with her while Eli is evacuated. Jane and her baby subsequently die around the beginning of the occupation.

The film connects her death much more directly to the German attack, by making the bombing the reason she goes into sudden labour and dies. This also adds the problem that if she'd had a normal pregnancy, she would have been evacuated.

That alteration strengthens Amelia's grief and gives her hostility towards Christian and the Germans a clearer personal origin, but I preferred the book's approach because it avoids making every tragedy on Guernsey the direct action of a German villain.

Sometimes people died because they were living through war with limited medicine, limited resources and terrible circumstances. It's also probable that it wouldn't have been possible to save them at the time under the best of circumstances.

Mark is practically a different man

Possibly the strangest adaptation choice is Mark Reynolds because Movie Mark is so much more sympathetic than Book Mark.

In the novel, Mark is an American publisher who becomes interested in Juliet after the success of her Izzy Bickerstaff book. He is rich, handsome and charming, but Juliet never seems especially happy with him. She appears to be dating him partly because she thinks she should like him. He is exactly the sort of man she is expected to want. Then he proposes after they have known each other for only a couple of months, and Juliet says she is not ready. Mark reacts badly.

What struck me while reading was how consistently his arguments are about himself. He thinks Juliet is perfect for him. He thinks they make sense together. He thinks he can give her a wonderful life. What Juliet actually wants seems far less important. Also, he never says the most important thing. He never says he loves her.

He also dislikes her growing attachment to Guernsey and does not really understand why she cares so much about these people or the book she is writing. He probably thinks them beneath him, and beneath her.

The film changes him into a diplomat and makes the relationship much more serious before Juliet leaves. They have been together longer. He proposes as she is leaving for Guernsey, and Juliet enthusiastically accepts. She looks genuinely delighted. Even though he gives her the most gaudy ring I have ever seen.

That creates a completely different problem.

Book Juliet already knows something is wrong with the relationship before Dawsey becomes a realistic possibility.

Movie Juliet appears happily engaged until she goes to Guernsey.

Mark also supports her far more in the film. When Juliet needs information about Elizabeth, he uses his connections to help. He eventually travels to Guernsey himself and brings her the information they have discovered. From his perspective, his fiancée left for what was supposed to be a relatively short trip, stayed much longer than expected, barely communicates with him and behaves completely differently when he finally sees her. Of course he is confused.

I actually felt slightly sorry for Movie Mark.

That is a major problem if the movie wants me desperately hoping Juliet will leave him for Dawsey.

Book Mark does visit the island too, but there it feels like a final attempt to persuade Juliet into the life he has already decided they should have. Again, he talks about what a wonderful match they are much more than he talks about loving her.

The book makes the incompatibility fundamental.

The film makes it situational.

Juliet herself is different

Lily James is lovely as Juliet, but the film version is softer and more conventionally polished than the woman I imagined from the book.

One tiny detail I particularly missed was Juliet's hair.

Book Juliet describes her hair as extremely curly and almost impossible to control. I loved that because it fitted the rest of her personality. She was not this perfectly composed fashionable young woman. I imagined something constantly escaping, moving and refusing to behave.

Movie Juliet looks beautifully polished almost all the time. Her hair is styled perfectly, she wears fashionable outfits with very impractical shoes for an island.

It is a small change, but it reflects a larger one. The novel's Juliet feels more certain of herself intellectually. She knows she is a writer. She has been writing successfully since she was young. She does not need Guernsey to teach her that she is capable of writing.

The film gives her more doubt about her work.

Book Juliet is searching for a subject.

Movie Juliet sometimes seems to be searching for herself as a writer.

I much preferred the first version because her transformation is not about discovering whether she has talent. It is about discovering what she wants her talent, her life and her relationships to be for.

Remy is one of the film's biggest losses

Removing Remy Giraud completely changes the final part of the story.

In the novel, Remy was imprisoned with Elizabeth and eventually writes to the Society. She is the person who can finally tell them how Elizabeth died.

Later, Remy comes to Guernsey. Her presence is incredibly important because the concentration camp is no longer something safely contained in a letter. Remy physically carries what happened there. She is recovering from starvation, trauma and unimaginable violence.

Dawsey takes a particular interest in helping her because that is simply who Dawsey is. Juliet misinterprets this as romantic interest and becomes jealous. Then Isola, in one of the most Isola moments imaginable, decides to investigate whether Dawsey is in love with Remy. Instead, she discovers evidence that he is in love with Juliet.

That entire sequence disappears from the film.

Removing Remy saves an enormous amount of time, but it also removes one of the novel's strongest direct connections to the concentration camps and simplifies the romance considerably.

The movie makes the romance the destination

This, ultimately, is the biggest difference between the two versions.

The novel contains a romance.

The movie is much closer to being a romance.

In the book, Juliet's relationship with Dawsey develops inside a much larger transformation. She falls in love with him, but she also falls in love with Kit, with Guernsey and with the community she finds there.

Crucially, she decides she wants to adopt Kit before her romantic relationship with Dawsey is resolved.

That matters enormously to me.

Juliet does not become Kit's mother because she marries Dawsey and conveniently acquires a child as part of the package. She chooses Kit independently. She is prepared to become her mother as a single woman. Kit has also chosen Juliet already. They don't just spend an afternoon together, they live together in Kit's home. It's almost as if Elizabeth sent Juliet to Kit in her stead.

The romantic resolution comes afterwards.

Similarly, Juliet never returns to London once she settles into life on Guernsey. She does not have to go back to the city, dramatically end one life and then run towards another. Her transition is slower and more organic. At some point, Guernsey simply becomes where she belongs.

That is why the ending of the book feels less like Juliet choosing between two men and more like Juliet finally understanding what home means to her.

Mark represents a life that looks desirable from the outside.

Dawsey is part of the life that actually makes her happy.

But even Dawsey is not the whole answer.

The answer is Guernsey.

The film is beautiful, but the book is richer

I did enjoy the movie. The cast is excellent, the setting is beautiful and the story still has enormous emotional power. I understand many of the adaptation decisions too. An epistolary novel full of numerous characters, historical anecdotes and months of correspondence cannot simply be transferred directly onto the screen.

Characters have to be combined, timelines have to be shortened, a two hour film needs momentum.

Giving Elizabeth's disappearance the structure of a mystery creates momentum. Making Mark a genuine romantic option creates a conventional romantic conflict. Getting Juliet onto Guernsey quickly allows the main cast to actually share scenes instead of spending half the film reading letters.

I understand every one of those decisions individually.

Together, however, they create a different story.

The film is about Juliet coming to Guernsey, uncovering Elizabeth's story and realizing she belongs with Dawsey.

The book is about Juliet being drawn into a community through letters, learning how people survived an occupation, reconstructing the life of a woman she never met, becoming a mother, discovering a family and finally recognizing that she has found the home she has been missing since childhood. The romance is part of that, bit it is not the centre of it.

I also think the book is much more interested in what happens after war. It takes place only months after the end of World War II, and the damage is everywhere. Juliet lost her London home to bombing. The people on Guernsey are visibly thin after years of shortages. Families have been torn apart. Children have returned after years away. Mines and German fortifications remain behind. Nobody simply wakes up on liberation day and becomes the person they were before the occupation.

They survived. Now they have to figure out how to live again.

That is where Juliet fits into the story. She is rebuilding too.

She lost her parents young. She lost another home during the Blitz. Her adulthood has largely been shaped by war. She has a career and friends, but she has never quite had that larger sense of belonging. Then one secondhand book leads to one letter from Dawsey Adams, and that letter leads to another, eventually those letters lead her home.

So while I think The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society works as a pleasant and emotional historical romance on screen, the novel gave me something much deeper. It gave me the occupation, the contradictions, the tiny stories, the moral complexity, Remy, a much more complicated Elizabeth and, above everything else, the feeling of a community becoming a family.

The movie gives Juliet a love story.

The book gives her a home.