The Bookshop (Flamingo) Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Bookshop (Flamingo) Book

Penelope Fitzgerald's books are small, perfect devastations of human hope and inhuman (ie, all-too-human) behaviour. The Bookshop unfolds in a tiny Sussex seaside town, which by 1959 is virtually cut off from the outside English world. Post-war peace and plenty having passed it by, Hardborough is defined chiefly by what it doesn't have. It does have, however, plenty of observant inhabitants, most of whom are keen to see Florence Green's new bookshop fail. But rising damp will not stop Florence, nor will the resident, malevolent poltergeist (or "rapper", in the local patois). Nor will she be thwarted by Violet Gamart, who has designs on Florence's building for her own arts series and will go to any lengths to get it. One of Florence's few allies (who is, unfortunately, a hermit) warns her: "She wants an Arts Centre. How can the arts have a centre? But she thinks they have, and she wishes to dislodge you." Once the Old House Bookshop is up and running, Florence is subjected to the hilarious perils of running a subscription library, training a 10-year-old assistant and obtaining the right merchandise for her customers. Men favour works "by former SAS men, who had been parachuted into Europe and greatly influenced the course of the war; they also placed orders for books by Allied commanders who poured scorn on the SAS men, and questioned their credentials." Women fight over a biography of Queen Mary. "This was in spite of the fact that most of them seemed to possess inner knowledge of the court--more, indeed, than the biographer." But it is only when the slippery Milo North suggests Florence sell the Olympia Press edition of "Lolita" that Florence comes under legal and political fire. Fitzgerald's heroine divides people into "exterminators and exterminatees", a vision she clearly shares with her creator--but the author balances disillusion with grace, wit and weirdness, favouring the open ending over the moral absolute. Penelope Fitzgerald's internecine if gentle world-view even extends to literature--books are living, jostling things. Florence finds that paperbacks, crowding "the shelves in well-disciplined ranks", vie with Everyman editions, which "in their shabby dignity, seemed to confront them with a look of reproach." Read More

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  • Amazon

    Shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1978 this novel centres on Florence Green, a middle-aged widow and her attempts to run a bookshop in a small East Anglian town.

  • Foyles

    'In 1959, when there was no fish and chips in Hardborough, no launderette, no cinema except on alternate Saturday nights, the need of these things was felt, but no one had considered, certainly had not thought of Mrs Green as considering, the opening of a bookshop.' When Mrs Florence Green, a ‘small, wispy and wiry woman’ decides to open a bookshop in the small Suffolk town of Hardborough she has no idea of the force of opposition that will ensue. In attempting to challenge a seemingly sleepy and indeterminate status quo, in her own quiet way, Florence uncovers an undercurrent of tenacious resentment against her small project. The complex webs of small-town community close in around her as those with minor influence seek to hold sway. Penelope Fitzgerald’s fiction is at its best when illuminating the lives of outsiders, outcasts, the misunderstood, the hopeful; the flotsam and jetsam often destined to be left behind. Nowhere is her keen eye for human frailty better exemplified than in the Booker Prize shortlisted novel, The Bookshop, a subtle blend of poignancy and humour, a masterclass in modern tragicomedy. ‘A gem, a vintage narrative… a classic whose force has not merely lasted but has actually improved in the passage of years’ – New York Times

  • TheBookPeople

    Penelope Fitzgerald's wonderful Booker-nominated novel. This, Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel, was her first to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It is set in a small East Anglian coastal town, where Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop. 'She had a kind heart, but that is not much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation.' Hardborough becomes a battleground, as small towns so easily do. 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. This is a story for anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

  • BookDepository

    The Bookshop : Paperback : HarperCollins Publishers : 9780006543541 : : 01 Mar 2016 : Shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop.

  • 0006543545
  • 9780006543541
  • Penelope Fitzgerald
  • 2 December 2002
  • Flamingo
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 176
  • (Reissue)
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