What a sad story. How I wish it had a different ending but with the creatures like Mrs Gamart, Mr Thorton, Mr Keble of the world, the reality hits hard.

One would think that, Surely you have to succeed, if you give everything you have.

But then, like the lovely Mrs Florence Green, we would sadly find ourselves blinded [...] by pretending for a while that human beings are not divided into exterminators and exterminatees, with the former, at any given moment, predominating.

And that devastating last line...

4.5

Curious how such a brief novel (123 pages) can so easily and deeply capture a reader's mind and heart.
The story begins with hope: at last, Florence Mary Green. a small town widow with no sense of her own worth, nor of her potential, has the opportunity to DO SOMETHING. She goes about the business of purchasing land, a building, and a supply of books.

The character and characters of the village are extruded through the mundane steps necessary. We see many of them through Florence's lenses, but she is not the narrator, so we see other folk through the omniscient and un-weighted words of the narrator. It is up to us to notice the shades of amity and enmity. Or perhaps just plain jealousy.....

This little gem will persist, I predict. Hopefully just as it is, although I can imagine it as a movie (but only by a VERY clever script writer and director).

(See, I even avoided telling you the truth about how this book struck me. I want YOU to see it for yourself)

Talvez alimentar muitas expectativas redunde mais facilmente em desilusão. Foi o que aconteceu com este livro. Estava com esperanças de encontrar um mundo povoado de personagens fascinantes e encontrei apenas figuras ocas, desinteressantes e descabidas. Qual é a razão para ter uma livraria no meio de nenhures? Qual é o motivo para estar assombrada? Esperava algum romantismo, alguma utopia, confesso. Talvez uma vizinhança destrutiva e temerosa do poder da leitura... Nada. Mea culpa. "Lolita entra nas livraria." Pensei: É agora. Nada vezes nada. Uma mulher consulta um homem mais velho para saber se o livro presta. Aí a narrativa transmite apenas uma visão machista e estereotipada da sociedade. Há uma derradeira hipótese: talvez o livro seja sobre uma mulher estúpida! Isso poderia acrescentar algo aos meus horizontes, se fosse realmente muito estúpida. Mas nem isso. Para mim, foi uma perda de tempo.

This is one instance where I much preferred the film to the book. The bleak climate of East Anglia matched the helplessness of the story.

Mrs Greene is a relatively young widow takes the chance of opening a bookshop in this town, which certainly could use the culture, resources and a freshening up.

Faced with negativity from all aspects she trudges along, barely making profits and keeping her chin up, never complaining. Everyone she had dealings with from the bank manager, to her solicitor, other shop owners were bleak and rude and cut her off at every chance possible.

The arts centre was more important, and the particularly nasty Mrs Gamart is sure to get her way. The location of this quaint bookshop is more suited to her purposes. Mrs Greene has one ally, who tries in vain to help. This character's demise was sad, but expected in keeping with the utter hopelessness.

On helping a worker in the field, before the work is undertaken to prepare her store.
n  Now, Mrs Green, if you'd catch hold of the tongue. I wouldn't ask everybody, but I know you don't frighten.n This was a horse. But this sums it up. Mrs Green did not shy easily.

n  She blinded herself, in short, by pretending for a while that human beings are not divided into exterminators and exterminatees..n The writing is very good, don't you think?

The harshness of the climate supported the harshness of the community, and the equally lack of support of her venture. n  They had been broken during the previous winter in rather a strange manner, when the washing on the line froze hard, and she was caught a blow in the face with an icy vest.n This was in reference to a ten years old's teeth.

The ending was sad, but this story was not to be anything else; I happily hold onto the ending of the movie to buoy my spirits a little. Mrs Green loved books, and although her book keeping skills were not perfect, her store damp, and the community being fickle, she did try her best.

El libro no es un alegato sentimental a favor de las librerías, sino una sátira cruel sobre la sociedad británica. El modesto negocio que una mujer de mediana edad emprende en una pequeña ciudad de Inglaterra se convierte en una soterrada lucha por el poder de las clases altas, que no están dispuestas a dejar ningún resquicio a la independencia, ni de la cultura ni de la mujer.

There is a certain type of novel where the strength of the writing is not in the action, or the mystery or the excitement of the plot, but in the evocative nature of the words- the very plainness and chronicling of ordinary times for ordinary people. No tidy wind up of happy endings...

It reminds me of Elizabeth Goudge, who once. in describing herself said, "I am not a serious chronicler of the very terrible contemporary scene, but just a storyteller. There is so much tragedy about us everywhere today that we surely don't want it in the storybooks to which we turn when we are ill or unhappy. We must escape somewhere." (Her The Rosemary Tree falls into this category of book.)

Why I bring this up is that Penelope Fitzgerald is also a master at this. This is the second of her works I have read. The stories are not monumental, but they are real. The plot is not fast-paced, so if you want the equivalent of a Schwarenegger film, or Mission Impossible, go elsewhere. If you want Julia and Richard in a romance, it won't be here. But if you want a simple story of everyday life and people, though not in the every day we currently inhabit, pick this one up.

Some of the things that charmed me in this novel? Well for starters, there was the town's reaction to the *new* novel Lolita. Having just decided that Lolita is not something I have to force myself to finish, I was particularly alert to what people thought. The exchange of letters between Florence and her lawyer had me chuckling in my chair while reading.

On an unusually upbeat evening, I was winding up from work. The recently bought, crisp, intense 300-pages long fictional drama, that I had left, tantalizingly, at the 273rd page the previous night, was softly tip-toeing in front of my eyes. The unread pages were already floating invitingly in the evening breeze and I could not wait to reach home for resuming the date. When I was just stepping into the lift, I received a call from a friend, a bibliophile in fact. ‘Hey! Do you know they are closing down L_____ ?! Can’t believe it man! I am .…….’

I was not listening. No more. The words that reverberated, at first, in concentric circles and then, suspended frozen, were ‘closing down'. That place; so many books, so many friends, so many chuckles, so many revelations, so many years, so many memories….. so much, no more. The floating pages dropped dead, the tantalization turned grievous and the upbeat became deadbeat in an instant.

For many of us, a bookshop is the second home; for some, the first. Florence Green was a proud member of the latter category and was on a mission to enroll the sleepy town of Hardborough, Suffolk under the former. Sustained, most of her life, by the kinship, the euphoria, the enthusiasm and the solace emanating from brick structures immersed in sagacious thoughts and profound poetry, she was more pained than surprised to see that Hardborough, where she had moved after being bared of her familial ties, had no bookshop. Promising herself that her forty-something frame, both above the shoulders and below them, was steely enough to brave the bureaucratic hurdles and warm enough to spread the literary cuddles, she embarked upon filling this void by opening and running a bookshop from the ‘Old House’.
n  n   

Courage and endurance are useless if they are never tested.

n  n And so were hers. The courage and endurance, which lay sheltered under the industrious shields of Christine, her 10-year old meticulous assistant, Ivy, her volatile-but-ethical accountant, Raven, the vagabond-but-helpful marshman and Wally, the mischievous courier boy-cum-cleaner came under trenchant attacks from the ill-disposed but politically powerful Mrs. Gamart, the supine-but-acerbic TV anchor, Milo and well, even the ‘poltergeist’ at the ‘Old House’. Florence fights, valiantly, through bundles of unsold stock, dwindling helping hands, dilapidating premises, legal impediments and shrinking hope.

But her internecine fight was not in vain. She gained, me.

When she continues to deliver free books to the primary schools despite her gloomy financial books, I stand there like a loyal visitor, enamored by her desire to spread the sparks of learning. When she trounces her duplicitous attorney with an authority that rivals those with the parliamentary sentinels at their disposal, I feel my hands instinctively rise to safeguard her from the legal barrage. And when her clamorous ordeal compels Mr. Brundish, the recluse boulevardier with highest distinction, to banish his decrepitude, drag his limp body, wound around a walking stick and counter Mrs. Gamart with a countenance to bring the wrongdoer to dirt, I could not help but feel proud.
n  n   

Will-power is useless without a sense of direction.

n  nBut what direction did Florence choose in the end? I don’t know because she never told me. I guess no one, in her place, would have. Because people who love books and bookshops are much like them: they don’t believe in ends...

Reread

According to the oldest man in the village, until Florence Green (our main character) opens a bookstore, there hasn’t been a bookshop in Hardborough (sounds Dickensian, doesn’t it?) since Dombey and Son was being published in installments. Not coincidentally (I’m guessing), Florence is also the name of Dombey’s daughter (not mentioned in Dickens' title). Hardborough’s banker, certainly condescendingly, writes to Florence (Green, that is, not Dombey): If over any given period of time the cash inflow cannot meet the cash outflow, it is safe to predict that money difficulties are not far away, a statement which is pure Micawber (he of David Copperfield). Okay, folks, that ends my Dickens interlude (for now). I thank you for your indulgence.

After reading Fitzgerald’s Offshore, I felt the urge to reread The Bookshop. David Nicholls, in the introduction of the 2015 edition, says its last sentence is one of the saddest he’s ever read. I agree; but for me the saddest thing in the book is Florence believing a lie told by the meanest woman in the village about that old man. Perhaps, with further reflection, Florence might realize it was not the truth; and, perhaps, that might bring her some small solace.

Un caramelo envenenado.

Parece un libro sencillo, alegre y divertido sobre la vida en un pueblecito y se descubre como una descripción descarnada de las luchas de poder en las poblaciones pequeñas, siempre conservadoras y deudoras de los poderes establecidos, de los caciques de costumbre.

Abstenerse gente que crea en un mundo mejor, o que le frustre que las personas que se lo merecen no siempre reciban lo que se merecen.

A simple story of a widow trying to open a bookstore in her small town while being met with so much opposition. Nothing really spectacular happens in the book but it was interesting to see how a small town operates. The story is definitely very realistic. I enjoyed some of the characters, especially the children. A very quick read.

Me resulta difícil evaluar la novela porque hace muy poco vi la película de Coixet, que sigue bastante fielmente a la narración de Fitzgerald, y probablemente lo más justo sea un 3.5. La novela termina incluso de modo más tristón, sin ese espíritu de rebeldía que asomaba al final de la película, y que creo enriquece el argumento. La historia es linda, no aburre, se lee velozmente, pero se extraña alguna complicación que sacuda la modorra de la calma vida de un pueblito inglés. Una novela buena pero menor.

Love the period, the place, the intrepid women. Excellent writing too.

But the naive levels reached at points for this protagonist? It just doesn't jump my disbelief fencing.

Still it was an entertaining read to the point of a 4 star. Just flawed in the major plot line, IMHO.