1.5 stars

The back of this book says that The Bookshop was 'shortlisted for the Booker Prize but unfortunately, to me, it sucked. I'm the first to admit some books are a bit over my head or I don't always get it, but in this case, I clearly GOT it, it just wasn't that good. I would have dished out two stars too, but the ending ruined that and left me in a bad mood.

The main reason this book almost didn't get finished (I would have abandoned if it wasn't so short), is that it was boring. Seriously boring. I was excited about a book with a bookshop. I love small towns. I love elderly women wanting to open a bookshop. I love shop rivalry. So what was missing? Any interest. The writing is dry and not to my tastes. This didn't help at all, but could be overlooked if the story actually had anything happen in it.

There are short bouts of humor I appreciated and enjoyed, but overall it's lackluster. The ending is a mega letdown too, not just because life can suck for fictional characters as well as readers, but because:  the most hated woman in the book gets her way and never gets whats coming to her; someone who stands up and does what's right and sweet (heart putter) doesn't get acknowledgment, and in fact the heroine never even learns he stood up for her... what's up with that?; there is a double betrayal for no reason I can see; the heroine is a sweet woman who's doing what's right but that doesn't matter.

The heroine is likeable enough, I suppose, but there's no solid reason for wanting to open a bookstore in the first place. She does not even, to me, seem to be that big of a book lover. She also has little fight in her. The town is narrow-minded and bigoted, which can be interesting in itself and loan a decent story, but here it just felt pointless.

There's nothing going for the book. I wasn't interested in the story despite trying with best efforts, the end was a let down, the beginning slow, the middle without direction. There is no climax either. It's seriously just 'suddenly there'. There's really no point to the novel - it's not even a book about failed dreams or anything really, or life lessons learned, it's just a depressing turnout that's not fair and not fair to read about. Even the assistant who the heroine cares for...well, I don't see what's so great about the 11 year old. She seems rude and distasteful to me.

The only thing I did enjoy was the small section for Lolita with the display and letters written back and forth about it. Cute stuff.

Obviously this isn't a book I can recommend. I wish it was, though, I usually dig bookstore and library settings.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Bookshop and would unreservedly recommend it to anyone who's into literary fiction.

The first thing that strikes you when you start reading this book is the complexity of Fitzgerald's sentences, esp. if you come from a contemporary literature background. Fitzgerarld brings a level of complexity and thoughfulness to her writing that reminds one of Virginia Woolf. Nothing here is in-your-face or confrontational; on the contrary, everything is gentle and subtle, just like the main character, Mrs Florence Green, who, in 1959, decides to take out a loan and open a bookshop in a small East Anglia town.

Why would anyone want to open a bookshop in a still largely depressed town whose inhabitants, one suspects, have as little to do with intellectual curiosity as they would have with an alien species? And yet, Mrs Green's bookshop does rather well at first, in fact so well that she has to hire a little girl of 10 to help her with her customers. Books about the royal family or memoirs of SAS servicemen are very much in demand, as are the services of a lending library which Mrs Green tries to organise. Yet, the bookshop owner makes a few fatal mistakes that will cost her dearly: she fails to make friends with and indulge Mrs Gamart, a local arts doyene. To make matters worse, the 10-year-old assistant raps Mrs Gamart's knuckles when she deigns to pay a visit to the bookshop, irritated by the fact that the lady messes up with the lending library's stickers and leafs through books intended for others. Of course, Mrs Gamart cannot let the insult go unanswered...

I loved this book for its poetic descriptions of the place (the marshes, the buidlings) and for creating a character (Mrs Green) that is as much courageous as she is tactful and kind. She is kind to Christine, her 10-year-old shop assistant, and she's even kind to those implicated in her downfall. No, Florence is not a fool; but she's not a very sensible person, either.

She had a kind heart, though that is not much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation"

But apart from kindness, Florence also has tenacity, and the ending reflects this; rather than give in to despair, as a lesser person might have done, Florence moves on gracefully, though not without feelings of pain and disappointment.

I was touched by this short novel and as soon as I finished it, I borrowed all the Fitzgerald books stocked by my loal library! Thanks, Ilse, for recommending this absolute gem!

I’m struggling to know what to say about this book. I’m aware of Penelope Fitzgerald’s huge reputation but I just seem to be missing something. I enjoyed it at some level. She was clearly very observant, especially around the pettiness of village life, and often made me smile....she always acted in the way she felt to be right. She did not know that morality is rarely a safe guide for human conduct.

I’m just not connecting with this author and have decided I’m going to stop trying. 3 stars because it was a pleasant read. That sounds like damning with faint praise but it’s all I can say really.

In a masterpiece of bad planning, the first novels by Penelope Fitzgerald I read were her last ones: The Beginning of the Spring, The Gate of Angels, & the The Blue Flower. Now reading a couple of her earlier ones, like this and At Freddie's I think Fitzgerald as a writer reached her peak quite late, or maybe didn't even reach it before her death. If The Bookshop is your introduction to Fitzgerald you have a treat before you, but for me, coming to it by the worst route, good though it is, I have the feeling that it could have been better.

Above all this book could have been shorter. The core of the story is in two conversation between elderly Mr Brundish who in some mysterious way embodies the community that the story takes place in and the two new comers: Florence Green - widow and the main character of the story & Mrs Gamart, the socially ambitious magistrate with her fingers in all the pies. Take those two scenes, slap on a bit of context and you can reduce the story to fifteen pages- it could have been a short story. Perhaps this is simply a matter of perspective as I sit and think, Fitzgerald's novels can be very easily boiled down to not much at all, indeed she summarised this one as 'a short book with a sad ending' - which as it happens sums up most of Fitzgerald's books.

"Not to succeed in one thing is to fail in all" (p.98) runs the motto on Mr Brundish's (large and cold) teapot, this is part of Fitzgerald's dualism, sad books that are very funny - particularly in the adherence to or braking of the conventions of polite conversation  does one say anything when the poltergeist is being particular obnoxious? or funny books that are very sad with careful little tragedies in this book the consequences of frozen washing and the 11+  UK school exam to decide what kind of school a child goes to visited upon a young girl, there is more dualism too in a story that is hyper local and yet universal.

Fitzgerald goes beyond parody in establishing her setting - the fictional Hardborough on the Suffolk coast, Suffolk is pretty isolated by English standards (meaning a long way from London as a person travels) the railway has abandoned the town, and the bridge has collapsed - there is a ferry boat - but the timetable is kept only on the far bank away from the town, the town faces the North sea, there are fishing boats (but the fishmonger in town is a failing business  maybe because Asterix style he orders his fish in from London  by rail ). The town is a borough, but hardly a hard one, the houses are damp, the cellars might be still filled with seawater from the last flood, and the fields are marshy, the cows stand in mist up to their udders the whole morning only to vanish back into it by the evening. It is a liminal place, at the end of the earth. But this is universal, everywhere has it's own back of beyond, it's region famous for inbreeding, laughed at as a good century behind the times, so while ultra insular, it was a Spanish director, Isabel Coixet, who turned this book into a Film. Into this setting Fitzgerald sets two incomers - Mrs Gamart who is set on dominating the town and transforming it into a rival to the non-fictional Aldborough, and the widow Florence Green, who decides to open a bookshop.

I had assumed from reading other reviews that the novel would be the bitter, bloody tale of the power struggle between those two and until the last few pages I was certain the novel had been oversold to me. If we follow Mr Brundish and subscribe to his opinions, then Mrs Gamart is a consummate politician who lives and dies by plausible deniability. When the trap slams shut on Mrs Green, it is absolute, crushing, and completely final, best of all Mrs Gamart's fingerprints are nowhere to be seen. "Not to succeed in one thing is to fail in all" indeed we might say, but things could have been worse, Mrs Green has her moments of boldness rewarded and her distinct successes, it is simply that in the eternal story of woman versus woman driving a bulldozer, the latter has a distinct advantage.

Like the ballad of peckham rye it is a 1959/60 story, but sex is not Fitzgerald's central concern, class, power and I suppose what is sometimes called social capital are important to both writers who besides seasoning their writing with jokes are equally fond of a cheerfully omniscient style of narration.