This is Penelope Fitzgerald’s second published book (1978); she had just begun writing 3 years prior at the age of 58. Reminds me of one of those people who start late (well, relative late for Penelope Fitzgerald) in life what makes them famous, be it artist or writer.

I found this slight novel to be a pure delight to read. Turns out Penelope Fitzgerald herself managed a bookstore in, and she knew her subject matter well.

The Bookshop is set in 1959 in a fictional seaside (i.e., North Sea) town in East Anglia, Hardborough. Florence Green decides the town could do with a bookshop, and the novel concerns her running it with some help from a smartass 10-year old, Christine, who says very funny things throughout the book. For that matter other characters in the book say very funny things whether they mean to or not. Although Florence was of the mind that the town needed a bookshop the question was whether the town decided they need a bookshop.

Such writing….
•t“…Everybody in the town knew when there were likely to be vacant premises, who was in financial straits, who would need larger accommodations in nine months, and who was about to die.”
•t“On wet afternoons, when the heavy weather blew up, the Old House weas full of straggling disconsolate holiday parties. Christine, who said they brought sand into the shop, was severe pressing them to decide what they wanted. ‘Browsing is part of the tradition of bookshop,’ Florence told her. ‘You must let them stand and turn things over.’ Christine asked what Deben (a seller of fish) would do if everyone turned over his wet fish.”
•t“Mr. Brundish is an old man who lives alone and seldom if ever ventures out from his home. But he wants to tell Florence that one of the townspeople is hatching up a plot to get rid of her bookshop, so he invites her over. He has lived alone for so long he has no social skills, staring at her…long periods of silence that would make me or you or Florence uncomfortable… awkward…. “He talked so seldom to people that he had forgotten the accepted form of doing so.”
I was trying to remember who I have read recently who has a similar type of wit and I thought of Elizabeth Taylor (a lot of people do not know of her oeuvre), and I feel more confident in my assessment after reading the review by JacquiWine (link provided below).

Notes
•tIn the book, Florence in her bookshop has a section for Everyman editions…” The Everymans, in their shabby dignity, seemed to confront them (paperbacks) with a look of reproach.” I have Everyman editions in my library…I like their style too…some have ribbon bookmarks.
•tA 2017 film adaptation entitled The Bookshop starred Emily Mortimer as Florence Green and was written and directed by Isabel Coixet.
•tIt was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1978 — she attained that the next year by her novel, Offshore.

Reviews
From Jacqui and her blog site JacquiWine…Jacqui writes wonderfully thoughtful reviews and this is no exception: https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2015...
Great and thorough review of Penelope Fitzgerald’s life and her writings by Julian Barnes in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...

Viendo la sinopsis de este libro, a cualquier lector le llama mucho la atención, además habia visto muy buenas críticas y me apetecía un montón leerlo.
Florence Green es la protagonista de esta historia, es una mujer viuda que quiere abrir una librería en un pequeño pueblo en Gran Bretaña. Pero se encuentra con varias dificultades para poder hacerlo y seguirá con ellas cuando consiga abrirla.
La autora nos va contando como transcurre la vida de Florence en este pequeño pueblo, es una mujer fuerte y acaba lidiando con la gente del pueblo que le pone trabas para abrir su librería.
No he llegado a empatizar con la protagonista, ya que pensé que se le iba a dar mas protagonismo al amor por los libros, mas citas, y no lo he encontrado en el libro.
Trata temas como la soledad, o la bondad, y sobre todo la aceptación y la influencia que tiene la sociedad en nuestras decisiones.
Lo que destaco, es la ambientación, ya que se describe la tranquilidad de un pueblo, la vida que se hace en los pueblos, la rutina de estos…
Una novela que se lee en un suspiro, pero que a mi me ha faltado algo más, mas relacionado con los libros.

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.

Estoy totalmente encandilado por esta novelita tan inglesa, tan delicada, tan valiente sobre un personaje femenino (fuerte, autónomo, moderno, de socarrón humor) que comete la inmensa osadía de amar tanto los libros que intenta mantener abierta la única librería de un pueblecito costero inglés a finales de los años cincuenta.

Me ha encantado.
Es una historia sencilla, breve y triste.
Una tragicomedia que habla de la soledad y de las dificultades para salir adelante en un pueblecillo pequeño en el que las reglas están estrictamente marcadas y es imposible huir de ellas.
Es un libro extraño porque no trata de crear grandes argumentos ni mostrarnos la valentía de la protagonista por sacar su negocio adelante, no, es la narración pacífica y tranquila de una mujer ya mayor tratando de navegar en aguas turbulentas. Creo que por eso mucha gente no consigue conectar con 'La librería', es un libro hecho de pequeños momentos, de apariciones de personajes que dejan mucho en el aire...
Creo que he conectado con la historia tanto porque se de primera mano lo que es tratar de sacar un negocio adelante sola, y porque adoro esa sencillez para mostrarnos los sentimientos humanos más escondidos.
Es un libro lleno de matices, muy sencillo, real y pesimista.
Me descubrí deseando que no se terminase, haciendo pausas para que me durase más la lectura.

"Sabía que había venido siguiendo un impulso de bondad. Al final, lo que ella valoraba por encima de cualquier otra cosa era la amabilidad"

The word that came to mind to describe The Bookshop is ‘damp.’ My spirits were certainly dampened after reading this short novel about the damp Old House that fought for a chance to be a bookshop which was located in Hardborough, a small English town sandwiched between sea and river, and shrouded perpetually in a damp fog.

The year is 1959. Mrs Florence Green, a middle-aged widow left a small inheritance by her husband, opens the only bookshop in Hardsborough. The 19th century Old House has stood vacant for many years and no one has thought of reviving it for habitation or commercial use because it has little to recommend itself. The water-clogged Old House smells of rats, is home to jawdaws, and has a resident poltergeist rapping the pipes. I could not quite fathom Florence’s motivation for wanting to set up a bookshop although as a lover of books, the idea of a bookshop is appealing. I also could not quite understand the ordinary town folks’ half-hearted and muted enthusiasm. What is obvious is the mean-spiritedness of Mrs Garmat, the patroness of the arts scene, who goes to great lengths to sabotage the bookshop. Perhaps, economic hardship makes the tradesmen less charitable toward a competing business.

To solicitor Mr Thorton’s dissenting voice, Florence has this to say: ‘A good book is the precious life-blood of a masterspirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.’ This is perhaps the only statement in this novel that is central to the soul of a bookshop. I was much cheered when lines formed outside the Old House when the lending library opened, when jostling for popular books like ‘Life of Queen Mary’ stirred up some liveliness in the seemingly dead-pan community, and when Nabokov’s Lolita makes its debut in Harborough. I had high hopes for the bookshop.

The ending left me wishing it were different. I don’t know enough about East Suffolk in the 1950s and it may well be that the ending was realistic given the tone of the political, social and financial climate at that time. Still I cannot help wanting something more resplendent to emerge from the struggles Florence has to battle. I admire Florence for her spirit of enterprise, courage, and most of all, her kindness. I hate to see kindness met by falsehood. There are other likeable characters such as the 10-year-old assistant (Christine Gipping) and formidable Mr Brundish who is Florence’s most vociferous supporter. For them, too, I had wished a better future.

This is my first book by Penelope Fitzgerald and I look forward to reading more of her writing. She writes a sparse prose and has a good ear for dialogues. I hope to get better acquainted with Fitzgerald.

The blurb describes Florence as a "kind-hearted widow" who innocently wishes to open a bookshop. Really?

This felt like not a well-meaning woman at all but a scathing attack on the townspeople. She is not "kindhearted" but arrogant, condescending, sarcastic. The narrator's voice, through humor, shares in this condescension of the minor characters. Even when Florence is generous, she seems more arrogant than nice. I wish I could feel bad for her in the end but I couldn't feel anything for her. It felt like Florence hated all the townspeople and they decided to get rid of her and that is sad but she never needed to be there, did she?

I admire the overall quality of writing- if not for the lack of engagement and lack of character development and motivation. Such as Why did Florence want to open a bookshop, at all? This bothered me.. All of the characters are flat. This alone was frustrating. Does it help that she was funny? Not at all. Florence was such an automaton of a character. And the characters around her were nothing but mean caricatures. I couldn't feel anything for this story.

The author has a quality writing style and interesting sense of subtlety- but it was too much subtlety. In the beginning you almost get a feeling that- this might be good! But I kept waiting for it to be good til the end. I have to give credit to the Lolita sequence: the only bit of comedy that really worked.

Side note: owning a bookstore would be my dream job- I would love to find more of an escapist novel on that theme & a small town setting but not a hideous small town like this one.

Fitzgerald’s Bookshop has the same deft touch and way with words that was so entertaining in Offshore, but there was a playful lightness in that novel that’s lacking here. Instead, while it’s quirky and full of clever, pithy observations, The Bookshop’s aura is all damp and gloomy.

Florence Green is the central character, an almost-assertive, middle-aged bookstore owner in a small (and small-minded) seaside town. She sets up shop in a rundown, haunted building called the Old House that’s been vacant for years. Why? Well, in her own words,

“For more than eight years of half a lifetime she had lived on the very small amount of money her late husband had left her and had recently come to wonder whether she hadn’t a duty to make it clear to herself and possibly to others, that she existed in her own right. Survival was often considered all that could be asked in the cold and clear East Anglian air”

And though nobody has any great expectations for it, the bookshop is in fact quite successful – for the first year, anyway. It’s not much of a living but at least she proves she can be an original. She causes quite a stir, for example, when she orders 250 copies of Lolita (this is set in 1959); it’s just about the only place it can be bought outside London.

But Florence accidentally antagonizes an important local figure, Violet Gamart, who had an idea to start an arts centre in the ancient building. It’s no surprise of course, that Mrs Gamart with all her local connections, including a compliant nephew in Government, has her way in the end. But a bit depressing nevertheless.

Other characters? There’s Colonel Gamart, Violet’s superfluous husband; Milo, a lazy and unreliable BBC TV man who Violet thinks should run her arts centre; the old recluse Mr Brundish, whose opinion Florence asks – improbably, I thought – before deciding to order Lolita; there’s Mr Deben, a sad-sack fish shop owner going bankrupt who wants Florence to buy his shop instead of the Old House. Christine, Florence’s precocious and hyper-organized 10-year-old assistant, has a bit of life to her but otherwise they aren’t appealing or sympathetic characters, and I couldn’t help comparing them to the Offshore people where I was rooting for all of them.

So in short, my 2nd Fitzgerald is only a 2.5 star read but I’m rounding up to 3 because she writes so well.

This is so delightfully funny and yet desperately sad at the same time that I'm spoilt for choice of marvels to share. Christine Gipping, for example, she of the broken front teeth:

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

And this odd accident takes on a sinister note later in the novel when we discover that Christine has failed her 11 plus and will be going to the Technical rather than the Grammar. Her mother:

n  "I've nothing against the Technical, but it just means this: what chance will she ever have of meeting and marrying a white-collar chap? She won't ever be able to look above a labouring chap or even an unemployed chap and believe me, Mrs Green, she'll be pegging out her own washing until the day she dies."n

Mrs Green, small, wispy and wiry, is the dauntless widow who opens a bookshop in a place where no-one seems in need of one, except the poltergeist on the premises ("That doesn't want us to go" Christine muttered. "That wants us to stay and be tormented"). In 1959, in Hardborough on the East coast of England. A time when there was no fish and chips in Hardborough, no launderette, no cinema except on alternate Saturday nights, the need of all these things was felt. Is it thus merely perverse of Florence to think of opening a bookshop whose need is not felt? In a place where the value of a good book is surely recognized by the Bank manager:

n   "Don't misunderstand me... I find a good book at my bedside of incalculable value. When I eventually retire I've no sooner read a few pages than I'm overwhelmed by sleep."n

Well, who knows if she might have made a go of it if the privileged upper crust, those who sail easily through life, those who eat up and spit out the bones of insignificant but kindly people like Florence Green hadn't massed their forces against her in acts that are as malevolent as they are arbitrary and careless? Who knows.

This is a little story about an odd and insignificant widow in an odd little village of Harborough UK. Florence Green has lived in this village for just over 8 years, she is not a local. She has a small income from her husband's estate but the thought crosses her mind that she should contribute more by being self sufficient and earn an income herself. As this small village appears to be void of anything other than essential shops Florence decides that she would like to open a bookshop in an old and seemingly derelict vacant house. This is the 1950’s and for a woman to apply for a bank loan for such a venture is met with resistance from the local bank manager who as it is the 50’s talks down to Florence. Quietly determined she does succeed and opens her bookshop. However given the parochial nature of the townspeople, certain residents take a set on her and her venture. The author gives the reader excellent descriptions of this village, a seemingly uninviting place, stoney beaches, bleak, windswept cold landscape and narrow minded inhabitants who are so ready to speak their mind without fear of being offensive. Florence for her part is too accepting and is thwarted in the end by a few of those with the means to do so and one suspects jealous of her and her endeavours.

As a child I often said to my mother: "That's not fair!" She would respond with : "Life's not fair". Florence Green, the main character in The Bookshop, would certainly agree.

Florence tried to expand the minds of the inhabitants of Hardborough without success. The ethos of this village just wasn't buying it. Due to ignorance, cruelty or apathy, the people let Florence know that what she wanted for them was not what they wanted, certainly not Nabokov's controversial Lolita.

I loved this story and Fitzgerald's style. What some have described as sad was, for me, an enjoyable and realistic story about human nature, power, politics, jealousy, and indifference. I admired Florence's determination and spunk. She ignored Violet's subtle and not so subtle warnings. She called her wimpy solicitor a coward. Not so admirable was Violet's malevolent determination. I loved Christine and Mr. Brundish and their relationship with Florence. Too bad she didn't know that Brundish supported her to the bitter end.

I think Florence will not be deterred. Perhaps after a successful enterprise in her future she will send these words back to Hardborough. From the song by Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive:

Do you thin I'd crumble
Do you think I'd lay down and die?
Oh no, not I, I will survive.

Some random quotes that I just really loved-

She drank some of the champagne, and the smaller worries of the day seemed to stream upwards as tiny pinpricks through the golden mouthfuls and to break harmlessly and vanish.

His fluid personality tested and stole into the weak places of others until it found it could settle down to its own advantage.

But the Old House Bookshop, like a patient whose crisis is over, but who cannot regain strength, showed less encouraging returns.

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.

A dark and understated story of a middle-aged woman who tries to start up a business in an unwelcoming town. The writing is pithy and spare, the reader must fill in the blanks - what is the motivation of the characters? What else is going on in their lives? I was puzzled much of the time, not sure what the point was. This novel certainly has very little to do with books. Probably, if I re-read it once or twice more, it would mean more, but I am moving on.