The Bookshop

By: Penelope Fitzgerald

Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt

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.

©1978 Penelope Fitzgerald (P)2018 Tantor

Horrible, unjust ending that made me irate!

I hated how the arrogant old upper class besom got her way and the sweet heroine just gave up and left town with her tail between her legs. Totally unsatisfying. I read to escape, not get hit in the face with the wet towel of reality.

The Bookshop is a sad and gloomy

A bit hard to understand. Quite a depressing book.
Thank goodness it was so short!
I would not recommend this to anyone.

Fitzgerald keeps it real.

An independent middle-aged woman decides to open a bookshop in an isolated North Sea village; a concise, biting, yet still charming look, at small town pettiness and ignorance.
Fitzgerald tells this without any stunts or over-dramatizing.

Main character’s integrity

The integrity of the main character and that small town politics and society can be just as complex and corrupt as national politics.

Frustrating

This book ends with my wondering why I had to hear this frustrating story of meanness and unfairness prevailing. The only good thing I can say is that at least it was short.