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The Bookshop
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The Bookshop
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The Bookshop
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The Bookshop

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop.

Hardborough becomes a battleground. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 15, 2016
ISBN9780008233075
Author

Penelope Fitzgerald

PENELOPE FITZGERALD wrote many books small in size but enormous in popular and critical acclaim over the past two decades. Over 300,000 copies of her novels are in print, and profiles of her life appeared in both The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. In 1979, her novel Offshore won Britain's Booker Prize, and in 1998 she won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for The Blue Flower. Though Fitzgerald embarked on her literary career when she was in her 60's, her career was praised as "the best argument ... for a publishing debut made late in life" (New York Times Book Review). She told the New York Times Magazine, "In all that time, I could have written books and I didn’t. I think you can write at any time of your life." Dinitia Smith, in her New York Times Obituary of May 3, 2000, quoted Penelope Fitzgerald from 1998 as saying, "I have remained true to my deepest convictions, I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?"

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Rating: 3.549943193757094 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I am a Booklover, I love books about books. That was the reason I picked this book up. It started on an interesting note, where a young widow keeps everything at stake and starts a bookshop, in an old town which until them never had any bookshop. Only she knew, a town which didn't had a bookshop, wouldn't like one. The obstacles arrive in the course of running the bookshop in a town that hardly reads, which includes a kind of power struggle in the town between the two women, ( Florence Green and Violet Gamart). It's a slow paced book so it had the thing in the middle for a while to get the reader bored.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    NEWS ALERT: Indie bookshops are closing left and right at alarmingly rapid rates everywhere; in both big cities like Chicago and English villages like Hardborough, the latter the quaint setting for Penelope Fitzgerald's, Man Booker shortlisted, second novel, The Bookshop; they're being shut down, the bookshops, as if they were sweatshops run by misers, seemingly every time you scan the morning headlines in Shelf Awarenes.Old news, bookstore closures? It wasn't old news in 1978, when Penelope Fitzgerald published The Bookshop, perhaps adding prescience to the poignancy already in glowing abundance in these bittersweet, but ravenously delectable pages about a courageous, recent widow's dream to do something (and to be somebody) different: Independent for the first time in her life: A bookseller. Brave woman.Florence Green (a pity her last name is so descriptively apt concerning her business acumen), itching for adventure and a means of making her own way in the world for the first time since her husband's death, takes a huge, optimistic gamble, and opens her bookshop in a long-vacated, leaking, draughty and dilapidated, antiquated structure befitting its name - "The Old House" - in an English village with an ominous name of its own: Hardborough. Indeed it's hard starting up any business anywhere, but a bookshop in an establishment as rickety and sodden as the Old House? Can you imagine? Isn't dampness and draught anathema to pulp? Water-stained books are not fast sellers.And isn't location everything too for a bookshop? Florence Green has chosen a site in an everybody-knows-everybody hamlet that has one unpaved road in, and just that same frequently flooded and muddied (when the high-tide rolls in) road out. Might be easy to open a bait-and-tackle shop at such a site, but a bookshop?And did I mention that the Old House is haunted by what the locals term a "rapper"? An entity that, no, does not wear a baseball cap sideways nor work double turntables simultaneously, but whom makes a lot of racket nonetheless. And knocks over books and sticker displays. The ghostly nuisance of such a benign poltergeist!Despite the odds stacked against Florence; and despite Violet Gamart and her uppity political power dead-set against the bookshop, for awhile, with the aid of an eleven year old girl, Christine Gipping, as well a part-time bookkeeper, and the most honorable auspices of the veritable heart and soul of Hardborough itself, Mr. Brundish, Florence Green is able to make a good go with her bookshop, and for a year, she's relatively, surprisingly, successful. Even her lending library is a smash.But not everyone is so thrilled with her success. Surrounding business's are jealous. Violet Gamart, (the Ice-Queen of Hardborough) isn't happy, either, her fairy-tale visions of the Old House becoming an "Arts Centre" for the town thwarted by this naive entrepreneur, Florence Green.Florence Green would've been wiser not to give Christine Gipping, her eleven-year-old, impulsive part-timer, so much authority in the lending library, turns out, especially on the occasion of Violet Gamart's very first visit to the store. Precocious Christine, strictly abiding by the checkout lending rules, "intervenes" rather rudely (but within her rights!) as Violet Gamart attempts to procure for herself a volume out of turn. There's a waiting list, Lady, abide by it! A swift ruler-thwack to Violet's knuckles and...The Old House Bookshop, unfortunately, inevitably is doomed. Sorry to not warn of spoilers, but the book (a novella really) lets you know soon that there won't be a happy ending.Penelope Fitzgerald's style is concise and fast paced, but full like a hearty homecooked meal leaves you full. The book is small, though, diminuitive, a diamond: perfect in equilateral literary geometric dimensions that only enhance its shiniest story sparkle. The Bookshop, in 123 pages, sparkles like that perfect diamond, more rare jewel than slim, rarely read book nowadays...and then some.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Rating: 5* of fiveThe Publisher Says: In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop - the only bookshop - in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors' lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence's warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one. My Review: Florence Green is my current idol of Resistance. She has lived quietly and unassumingly in Hardborough, a small East Anglian seaside town, and realized that her life was simply passing and not being lived. So she took her small inheritance and opened a bookshop.A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.Of course, she takes out a loan against the freehold of her premises to start the business. The sums are risible by today's standards, since this is 1959, but they seem enormous to Mrs Green. She sets out to stock her business with the remainder stock of her former employers in London, then contacts publishers' sales agents to visit and display their wares:Those who made it {to her shop} were somewhat unwilling to part with...what Florence really wanted, unless she would also take a pile of novels which had the air, in their slightly worn jackets, of women on whom no one had ever made any demand.This being 1959, a certain degree of wincing at this self-deprecating, or merely invisibly sexist, humor is to be granted; but Fitzgerald wrote the novel in 1977 or thereabouts, as it was first published in 1978. Was this mildly misogynistic sally meant to be read with a raised eyebrow, or was she simply oblivious to its sexism? I don't know, but I'm guessing it wasn't ironic based on the tone of the tale. It's very funny either way.Life as a business proprietor is not stress-free. Mrs Green is a busy, busy woman. Many are the factors she is required to balance in her running of the business. Yet summer comes but once a year, and after all what good is living in a seaside village if the sea is invisible?She ought to go down to the beach. It was Thursday, early closing, and it seemed ungrateful to live so close to the sea and never look at it for weeks on end.It's always seemed odd to me how many people I know here in my own seaside city who simply don't pay the slightest attention to the ocean that surrounds us!Mrs Green has failed to do one crucial thing in opening her shop: Get the town's Great and Good on side. In fact, when she is invited to the local county set's meeting place, she receives a very simple and direct order to cease and desist her plans to open her shop in the Old House, which it transpires the local grande dame wishes to put to another use. To everyone's blank surprise, she does not back down. The invisible battle lines are drawn:She had once seen a heron flying across the estuary and trying, while it was on the wing, to swallow an eel which it had caught. The eel, in turn, was struggling to escape from the gullet of the heron and appeared a quarter, a half, or occasionally three-quarters of the way out. The indecision expressed by both creatures was pitiable. They had taken on too much.The battles go in Mrs Green's favor...until they quite memorably do not. The quality do not like being told no.But the battles are waged fully! Mrs Green is not one to lie down and say die!Courage and endurance are useless if they are never tested.The tests are, in the end, simply more than Mrs Green has the resources to withstand. The state gets involved. The lawyers and the banks are not on her side. The town isn't willing to pull themselves out of the primordial muck of How Things Are Done to rally to her aid.It was defeat, but defeat is less unwelcome when you are tired.And yet Florence Green stood tall until the last moment, only leaving Hardborough when her very last farthing is needed to buy her way out of the morass that her impertinent refusal to bow before the quality has landed her in.For that reason, I recommend this book for your 45-hating, Resistance fighting, Yule giftee. It will give them a rock to stand on.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    What a frustrating town! I grew depressed by the ending .
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "Culture is for amateurs."

    It is now de rigueur to declare Fitzgerald as one of the great neglected English novelists of the 20th century, and I must add my voice to that woeful chorus. Her starkly funny - or perhaps humorous upsetting - style is akin to those great ladies Muriel Spark and Barbara Pym. Her characters, like theirs, often hover on the fringes of good society; the "distressed gentlewomen", Pym often calls them.

    Florence Green is one such character, a plain but still reasonably young widow who chooses to open a bookshop in a town that wants to reject her at every turn - even her resident poltergeist wants nothing to do with her. In 10 short chapters, Fitzgerald outlines Florence's unsettling encounters with the townfolk in wry, pointed notes, never allowing us to become either sympathetic or deeply enmeshed in the lives of any of them. Its events are of no consequence, and yet somehow feel staggeringly consequential. And at the heart of it all are questions about how we appreciate culture, how we relate to books themselves, and why we allow our dreams to take hold of us against all reason.

    A deeply enjoyable read for fans of ironic British novelists.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is one of those books that kept me up all night to finish it. I hoped things would work out for Florence Green and her move to an East Anglican town to open a bookshop in her home. But she had the town's aristocratic Mrs Gamart against her so it was a losing battle from the beginning. Not only is Florence occupying a building Mrs Gamart wants for an Art Centre, but she's new to the town, an incomer, with no established supporters. Even the eleven-year-old helper blames Florence for her failure to pass her eleven-plus exam and gives her the cold shoulder. Fitzgerald has given us a story that is beautifully written, but with many mean-spirited characters and characteristics we'd prefer never to experience. However, I will look for more by Fitzgerald.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Penelope Fitzgerald is rapidly becoming a new favourite author. In [The bookshop], she presents the story of a small English village and its response to the opening of a bookshop -- and especially to the lady who runs it. The focus lies not so much on the quirky villagers that tend to populate these kinds of books, but rather Fitzgerald’s no-nonsense understanding of human flaws as filtered through social negotiations around how to handle irrational pettiness and whether or not to indulge in it. Social commentary through refusing to overtly comment on social issues: a very memorable book. One thing I absolutely have to mention, though, is the humour, which is so dry, so sneaky and so tongue-in-cheek that you might miss it: Fitzgerald’s voice tends to the matter-of-fact tone and her humour sometimes required a double-take. Definitely one of the standout features. Another is the ending, which, oh dear, is absolutely perfect, and I won’t spoil it for you. (If your copy has an introduction, read it last!)I thought The bookshop was a marvellous, brilliant book. Probably one of the best I’ll read this year. It has only strengthened my resolve to read more by Fitzgerald.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Set in England in 1959, Florence Green is a widow in her fifties who elects to open a bookshop in a quiet seaside village. She buys the Old House, which has been vacant for over five years and rumored to be haunted. The business begins to thrive, but it does not last long. It seems she has transgressed social boundaries in purchasing this house that a local woman wants to use as an arts center. This book is not a cozy read about a bookstore. It is a sad story of jealousy and scheming against a person who has done nothing wrong. It is a short book and a quick read. It was published in 1978 and nominated for the Booker Prize. The story is nicely written but I never fully engaged with it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A sad little book about an old woman wants to open a book shop.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An odd little story. In a way nothing happens and yet, a woman arrives in a small village, opens a bookshop, is bothered by a poltergeist, has some moderate success and then all of a sudden it all goes belly up.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Why would anyone open a bookshop in a DAMP basement?With this alternately pleasant, but ultimately boring and predictable, plot with few twists,readers may end up feeling dreary.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A simple seeming story of a widow who opens a book shop in a small semi-isolated town on the coast of Suffolk mid-20th century. She is opposed by the town's most active social force. It went by quickly, which is good for me because I wasn't getting anything but an uneasy mood from it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    At times our personal experiences and our literary ones neatly over lap. It was Penelope Fitzgerald's short novel about an outsider attempting to open a bookshop in a town she's unfamiliar which did so for me.
    Although in my case it was two outsiders, opening two book shops and in two unknown towns, the discomfort rang true. We should've displayed the works of Camus in the window, to see if the townsfolk got the message.

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Fitzgerald wrote an acerbic view of a small East Anglian village. Here, the townsfolk reflect a hierarchical society, cast in an economically-depressed situation. The story was a very bittersweet look at the efforts of a middle-aged widow attempting to make a go of running a bookshop under difficult circumstances.The characterisations are quick, brief pen strokes, populating the narrative with mostly not very nice people. The lack of empathy and the self-serving village ‘aristocracy’ were very trying to read about. The novel reminds one of Sheridan’s School for Scandal in the way village culture reflects the insidious influence in this society. The village Queen Bee (Mrs. Gamart) is a nasty piece of work and there are few redeeming personalities in the other characters. Perhaps that was the point? Fitzgerald drew an excellent portrait of this dark side to village life and for that alone, the book deserves the 3-stars.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5 This is a small book, but it takes a big effort to pick up on all the understated meaning and happenings. The narrator has a Dickens-like quality of knowing a lot and subtly commenting on what is happening, while pushing the plot along. The plot is rather simple: It is 1959 and Florence Green, a widow "in her middle years" has determined she would like to open a bookshop in her isolated seaside marshy town of Hardborough. She buys an old deserted house "Old House" complete with poltergeist, or "rapper" as the locals call it, and opens shop. However, in pursuing her plan, she crosses one of the society matrons, Mrs. Violet Gamart, who wants the same spot for an Arts Council, even though she has had numerous years to put this in motion. The town becomes a little divided on the issue, but again, all very understatedly so. In this way the reader gets to know more of the townspeople through their actions and characteristics: Christine Gipping, the 10 year old who becomes Florence's sales clerk with quite a bit of authority, Milo North, a Londoner, and rather unambitious young man of no convictions with ties to the BBC and a live-in girlfriend, Kattie, Mr. Brundish, the town patriarch from the oldest family, who is essentially a recluse, but Florence's staunchest supporter. The comic way they all interact and know exactly what is happening in each other's lives throughout the town would make for a great Masterpiece Theatre programme. In one "episode," Florence stocks her store with the new bestseller, Lolita, and I thought that would be her undoing, but it is humourously her smartest business move. In another episode, a watercolorist shows up with all his canvases to exhibit in her tiny shop because her lack of an answer to his query meant an invitation to him. The narrator's wry commentary is typical: "Later middle age for the upper-middle class in East Suffolk, marked a crisis, after which the majority became water-colourists, and painted landscapes. It would not have mattered so much if they had painted badly but they all did it quite well. All their pictures looked much the same." (58) "Courage and endurance are useless if never tested" (18) and that is the position Florence finds herself in throughout the short story, trying to justify her existence and business in the town. The ending is disappointing, but the journey to it is worthwhile.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Starts off well and captures smalltown East Anglian life well, but even for a short novel I found it a bit of a struggle to finish. Good cast of villains though.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "The Bookshop" is a good book, but it's worth noting how similar it is to a lot of bad books. It takes place in a small, English picturesque town that seems charmingly stuck in time. It's a place where everyone knows one another, full of bright-eyed, industrious kids, taciturn fishermen, a slightly ridiculous local aristocracy, and more eccentrics than you'd think possible. Everyone knows everyone else's business. We hear a lot of local dialect. If it had been written slightly differently, "The Bookshop" could have been a cheesy romance or a cozy mystery. Thank heavens that Penelope Fitzgerald did us the favor of writing this one instead. The book's center is its main character: Florence Green, the owner of the titular shop. She's a woman starting over relatively late in life who knows her chances, is unshakably committed to her project, and seems to thrive on adversity itself. An outsider to most of the townspeople and a widow, she's tough-minded and a survivor, but also a loner. She reminded me not a little of Peggy Cort, the head librarian that served as the focal point of Elizabeth McCracken "The Giant's House." It seems slightly ridiculous to say that a book that describes her efforts to start up a bookshop in a rural English town is about her confrontation with evil, but I'm not sure that would be exactly inaccurate. Fitzgerald, unlike other writers who deal with this sort of material, has a remarkably sharp take on evil, and not just its most snarling, aggressive manifestations. Fitzgerald's novel is filled with characters that, although it would be difficult to call them bad in every sense, but might be called morally lax: too passive, too egocentric, and not careful enough with their own selves. In this novel's constrained setting, their sins accumulate and "The Bookshop" turns, slowly and inevitably, into a small tragedy. This might be considered, in its own way, a bit of a relief. Since Amazon started eating up establishments like Florence Green's by the gross, it's hard not to get a little nostalgic about small bookstores, but I suspect that Florence herself wouldn't be having any of it. She's nothing if not practical and unsentimental about the business of books; Fitzgerald, who'd done bookshop work herself, makes an effort to present bookselling a trade like any other. The reader learns which books sell and which books don't, how returns work, and, ultimately, how hard it is to keep a bookshop going. Indeed, the question of literary quality is raised only once, and Florence isn't the one who resolves the issue. Now that we can imagine a future in which booksellers are about as common as farriers, "The Bookshop" might serve as a useful historical document from a time when a small city without a bookstore was something of an anomaly. For a novel that can seem pastoral and quaint, "The Bookshop" has real teeth, but I wouldn't be surprised if it also moved some readers to think of some much-missed bookshop in their own pasts. I, however, have to admit that I read it on my Kindle.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Florence Green, a middle-aged widow, opens a bookshop in a seaside village. She encounters hardships at almost every turn. This is a brief but powerful novella. Although not the story I expected, the struggles depicted demonstrate a more realistic situation than many of the "bookshop" books on the market.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In the late 1950s, middle-aged widow Florence Green decides to open a bookshop in a small seaside village in Norfolk. Mrs. Green had worked in a bookshop between the wars. That bookshop is closing, and Mrs. Green is able to acquire its remaining stock for her store. (That should have been her first clue that maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. If the books hadn’t sold in the city, what makes her think they’d sell in a small village?) Mrs. Green unknowingly thwarts the plans of Violet Gamart to use the old house for an arts centre. Mrs. Gamart is second only to Edmund Brundish in the village’s social hierarchy, and she uses her influence to chip away at Mrs. Green’s enterprise.This is not a feel-good English village novel, and it left me feeling melancholy. It’s as if Benson’s Lucia is pitted against one of Pym’s excellent women, with Lucia retaining the upper hand throughout. I’m not sure what purpose the poltergeist is meant to serve. I think maybe it was trying to warn Mrs. Green, and even it gave up on her in the end.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    It was okay. Kind of boring and it didn't really seem to have a point but it was interesting enough I guess. It had some nice parts.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A quirky little book about quirky people in a quirky little town in England. A delight to read and enjoy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As I had seen the movie the previous summer, this rather interfered with my reading as comparisons would be made. Surprisingly I liked the movie better, perhaps the only time this has happened. Not the least of which for the somewhat happy ending of the movie that is missing from the abrupt conclusion of the novella. Mostly the movie kept very close to the text of the story, but somehow added greater depth to the characters. On its own I found this novella well paced with lovely prose and lots of understated humour, but again sparse on the characterization -- which perhaps is to be expected in a short work. Nice but not great.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I was surprised to learn that Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1978, surprised primarily because the book is so short that it does not allow for its multiple characters to be much developed before the book reaches its quick ending. I should say, too, that I stumbled upon the well-received 2017 movie version of the book a few weeks ago and watched that film before reading the novella (it’s between 118 and 163 pages long depending on which edition is chosen). The movie was more depressing than it was sad, but even then I was intrigued enough by some of the characters that I decided to read the book in order to learn more about them and their motivations. But it turns out that, the screen play does a better job of exploring the characters than the book does – and that’s not at all what I expected to find.The Bookshop is the story of Florence Green, a middle-aged widow who in 1959 moves to the fictional English seaside village of Hardborough to open the only bookshop in town. It is only after she buys the Old House and opens the shop that Florence learns that one of the most influential women in Hardborough wants to close her down and use the Old House for her own purposes. It is no small accomplishment that the bookstore ever manages to open its doors in the first place, as the Old House is a damp old wreck when she moves in and is even haunted by the Rapper, a noisy ghost that refuses to vacate the property. Florence does manage to open the doors even though the only hired help she can afford is a ten-year-old girl who comes in on Saturdays and after school every day. Florence, though, gets lucky when the little girl turns out to have excellent organizational skills that can be put to good use in a bookstore – especially a shop whose owner knows so little about running such a place herself. And when Florence decides to feature Vladimir Nabokov’s brand new (to England) novel Lolita in the shop window and sales take off, it looks like she just may make a go of the shop after all. The ruthless Mrs. Gamart, however, never gives up her campaign to rid the Old House of its books and bookstore-owner so that she and those who think like her can convert it into an arts center. She is always there, more or less in the background, pushing others to do her will, and before long Florence is forced to take the threat seriously. Can she actually be evicted from the Old House despite the fact that it is both her only home and source of income? More importantly, will she?Bottom Line: The Bookshop has an interesting story to tell but the sparseness of so many of its characters makes it difficult to believe. That Mrs. Gamart is an amoral woman whose personality intimidates her ex-military officer husband is obvious. What is not so obvious is why a seaside tourist village is filled with so many people just like her. I suspect that if that backstory had been explored in The Bookshop, I would have enjoyed it much more than I did.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a nice little story. Its amusing and very proper. However, the conclusion left me asking what the point?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Charming and delightful if somewhat forgettable, a woman opens a bookshop in a town which doesn't really want one, except for an old aristocrat no one sees.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Brilliant and very British! The odds are definitely stacked against Florence Green, starting with her banker, as she begins to make a go of a new bookshop in rural Suffolk by the North Sea. There are definitely hurtles to be overcome - such as deciding what books she should stock that would appeal to customers and where to store them to protect them from the dampness that permeates the town. Along the way she manages to befriend many of the town's vividly drawn characters and alienate others. A very funny and poignant book.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I finally abandoned this as too depressing midway through.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    What on earth was the Booker committee thinking when they shortlisted this? More to the point, why do all these other 'community' reviewers think this is such a good book? These questions suggest that I am out of step with the rest of the world, which of course is true, but I think there is also some other factor at play. Many people describe this as humerous, but I'd be surprised if I smiled more than once in the hundred or so pages that I read before pulling the plug. Humour is, after all, a very personal thing. I wonder if the book is also somewhat dated now? I also felt as though none of the characters was treated with sufficient depth for my liking. I suspect I might have given it a higher rating if I had continued to the end, but I'm just too old to spend time on anything that isn't giving an adequate return for my investment (thanks for permission, Nancy Pearl).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A friend put me on to Penelope Fitzgerald a year or two ago, and I read and enjoyed her first novel The Golden Child (1977). It is a satire of life in a cultural institution, this one a museum in the King Tut boom of the 70’s. There was also a funny bumbling Cold War espionage angle. I’ve been picking up her other titles as I see them at Friends of the Library sales, but hadn’t read another until The Bookshop last week. A war widow in late 1950s England resolves to open a book store in the seaside village where she has lived for ten years. Let me try to illustrate how good it is by describing all the ways that the recent movie adaptation was awful. I think the movie was actually longer than the book—you can read the book in about two hours, and it flies. The movie is nine hours long, seemingly, and I only watched about 45 minutes of it.Fitzgerald is entirely clear-eyed, sharp, warm, and very funny. The movie, on the other hand, is ponderous, mawkish, self-important, humorless, and dull. The movie protagonist rhapsodizes about the magical significance of books and stores full of them, which is absent from the novel. In the novel she’s trying to be a businesswoman, and is totally unsentimental about books (as people in the book business actually tend to be). She doesn’t even seem to be particularly well-read. I gather from the preview that the big middle part of the movie which I skipped turned her into a moralizing crusader against censorship in opposition to the rural fuddy-duddies scandalized by Lolita. Penelope Fitzgerald, though, doesn’t moralize.The movie also ruins an interesting relationship by hinting at a totally implausible romance which is absent from the book. And the entire narration (by a grown version of a child character in the book) is a creation of the movie, is execrable, and would make Penelope Fitzgerald vomit in horror if she were alive to hear it. I skipped to the last few minutes of the movie to satisfy my morbid curiosity about what they would do to the ending and thereby stoke my burning hatred for everyone involved (except of course Bill Nighy, who has license from me to do whatever he wants at any time). I will give what little credit is due: They ruined the ending in a totally inexplicable, incomprehensible, and out-of-nowhere way, instead of ruining it in the way you expected. Avoid the movie with extreme prejudice.The book, on the other hand, is recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My expectations were a bit Pym-ish. The Bookshop promised all sorts of apt visions, austerity, widows, spinsters, modernity, the Church. Well there were traces of such harbored within, but the bend bent elsewhere. I was actually reminded of Murdoch's Sandcastles, the provincials backbiting like crabs, human spirit crushed by petty jealousy. It was perfect day for this here: cats and dogs all day.