Books like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
What should you read after Mary Ann Shaffer’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Mary Ann Shaffer
- 2008
- Historical fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchEleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Gail Honeyman
Another lonely woman rebuilt by neighbours who refuse to leave her alone, with the same trick of hiding serious damage underneath a very funny narrating voice.
- Found family among neighbours
- Gentle humour about hard times
- A village full of eccentrics
- Contemporary Glasgow, no letters
Best for reading as rescueThe Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Gabrielle Zevin
A bookseller on an island, saved by the people who keep walking into his shop. If what you loved was books repairing a life, Zevin makes it the whole argument.
- Reading as rescue
- Found family among neighbours
- A book club invented as an alibi
- No historical setting
Great matchA Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman
A prickly man and the neighbours who will not take the hint. Backman finds the same laugh-then-ache rhythm Shaffer can manage inside a single paragraph.
- Found family among neighbours
- Gentle humour about hard times
- An absent woman everyone remembers
- One grumpy man, not a chorus
Great matchThe Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Rachel Joyce
It begins with a letter and turns into a walk the length of England, collecting eccentrics and old griefs in the same gentle, unhurried way.
- Gentle humour about hard times
- A village full of eccentrics
- Told entirely in letters
- One man walking; very low plot
Best for the comic voiceThe Rosie Project
Graeme Simsion
Pure comfort, with a first-person voice you will end up quoting at people. Same delight in a narrator whose formality keeps producing accidental jokes.
- Gentle humour about hard times
- A village full of eccentrics
- Romantic comedy, no history
Great matchThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon
A narrator whose way of describing things is the entire pleasure, and a small community that turns out to have been keeping something from him for years.
- A village full of eccentrics
- Told entirely in letters
- Reading as rescue
- No warmth of a group
Great matchThe Help
Kathryn Stockett
Several voices taking turns to tell one town's story, and a writing project that becomes an act of quiet resistance. Shaffer's structure, moved to Jackson, Mississippi.
- Told entirely in letters
- A book club invented as an alibi
- Occupation from the kitchen table
- Race politics handled contentiously
Great matchThe Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd
A girl taken in by a household of women who feed her and let her stay. The same conviction that the family you find can outperform the one you were issued.
- Found family among neighbours
- An absent woman everyone remembers
- Coming-of-age story at heart
Best for the villageMajor Pettigrew's Last Stand
Helen Simonson
An English village of exactly the right size — everybody's business is everybody's — and a late romance conducted with impeccable manners and real feeling.
- A village full of eccentrics
- Gentle humour about hard times
- Found family among neighbours
- Contemporary; no occupation
Worth a look — with a warningThe Little Paris Bookshop
Nina George
A man who prescribes novels to strangers, and a letter he took twenty years to open. The bookish consolation you came for, in a floating French key.
- Reading as rescue
- Told entirely in letters
- An absent woman everyone remembers
- Whimsy laid on thickly
Worth a look — with a warningBeartown
Fredrik Backman
The author of Ove writing a whole town instead of one man, honestly and without sentiment — community as it behaves when it decides to protect the wrong person.
- A village full of eccentrics
- Found family among neighbours
- Sexual assault central to the plot
Best for the documentsWhere'd You Go, Bernadette
Maria Semple
Assembled entirely out of emails, faxes, invoices and school notes, and very funny about a woman whose absence organises the whole book.
- Told entirely in letters
- An absent woman everyone remembers
- Gentle humour about hard times
- Satirical Seattle setting
Great matchThe Language of Flowers
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
A girl with no people learning that a trade and a few stubborn adults can add up to a life. Quieter than Guernsey and just as interested in repair.
- Found family among neighbours
- Reading as rescue
- Foster-care trauma throughout
What should you read after The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society?
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman — another lonely woman rebuilt by neighbours who refuse to leave her alone, with the same trick of hiding serious damage underneath a very funny narrating voice.
If what stayed with you was reading as rescue, read The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin instead: a bookseller on an island, saved by the people who keep walking into his shop. If what you loved was books repairing a life, Zevin makes it the whole argument. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman is the other strong option — a prickly man and the neighbours who will not take the hint. Backman finds the same laugh-then-ache rhythm Shaffer can manage inside a single paragraph.
Loved something else?
Start from any book and we’ll build the list around your reasons.
Find my next book →NextBook is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. We earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. It doesn’t affect which books we recommend or how we rank them.
More “what to read next” lists
- Books like 1984
- Books like 2312
- Books like A Clockwork Orange
- Books like A Darker Shade of Magic
- Books like A Gentleman in Moscow
- Books like A Little Life
- Books like A Man Called Ove
- Books like A Memory Called Empire
- Books like A Wrinkle in Time
- Books like All Systems Red
- Books like All the Bright Places
- Books like Altered Carbon