[.ca] Bookshop (ISBN 0006543545)

From Amazon.com:
Since 1977, Penelope Fitzgerald has been quietly coming out with small, perfect devastations of human hope and inhuman (i.e., all-too-human) behavior. And now we have the opportunity to read "The Bookshop," her tragicomedy of provincial manners first published in 1978 in the U.K., but never available in the U.S. The Bookshop unfolds in a tiny Sussex seaside town, which by 1959 is virtually cut off from the outside English world. Postwar 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 favor 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, favoring 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." One senses that classic hardcovers would welcome The Bookshop, despite its status as a paperback original. --Kerry Fried

less is less:
Penelope Fitzgerald creates little gems--sentences that are so good you keep on reading, hoping the book itself will become more satisfying. But a lot of hors d'ouevres don't make a feast. Just when the story seems ready to go somewhere, it takes a wrong turn leading the reader toward yet more tidbits. Among other things there's a poltergeist, that (who?), like everything in this story seems to have landed there quite arbitrarily. I felt I was reading a set of notes for a novel, notes that are often charming, but incomplete.

True to day to day life:
Many have commented on how brief this work is. There is no arguing the point, as "The Bookshop" is brief as defined by the pages it occupies. Ms. Fitzgerald also writes concisely, however she conveys as much or more than many who would take two or three times the length of this work to tell the same story. The result would be no better; nothing more would have been related, and the reader would have just consumed more time. The events in the story come to the reader as they affect the central character. We are not privy to every conversation between other characters, nor do we witness their every thought, their every action. Just as we do day to day, we receive and react to information and events, as we are made aware of them. We share the fears, the suspicions, and the insight Florence has, but that is where it ends. We are not taken away from her to hear the plans set in motion by others; we have little advantage over her in terms of information that we alone possess. I think the book is brilliant because it tells a story the way any of us would have experienced the events if they had happened to us. Ms. Fitzgerald cuts away anything that is remotely extraneous, but what she leaves is beautifully compact and true to life. I have just started her work "The Blue Flower" which is massive in comparison, should be interesting.

The ideal book to give to someone locked in a room...:
as it can slide easily under most doors, and is an excellent read. It will become a precisely drawn world to live in for a few hours before devoting yourself to trying to get out of the room again. The characters were sharply drawn, and the ending grabbed at my throat a little. My only complaint is the same one I have about Hardy: the author, despite having a keen sense of humor, seems to think that life is inevitably a rather sad affair - which, who knows, maybe it is - but how one dramatizes that inevitability is a different story. Here the little doomsday machine that the author creates for her beloved people doesn't seem to arise naturally from the personalities of the characters or the general state of their world, but from the author's belief that things just can't work out for people. In a historical novel like The Blue Flower, the end is already a matter of fact, so no one can accuse her of contriving to scuttle the ship, but here I felt like maybe she had taken an axe down to the hold herself. A beautiful piece of writing nonetheless.

The Precious Bookshop:
This was an incredibly enjoyable book to read. Penelope Fitzgerald had a precision with words that make them clear and pleasurable. One of the main themes she explores in this novel is the cosmopolitan view verses the small town sensibility. It was exciting for me to read about the prospect of a new bookshop because I enjoy to read just about anything, but many people whose reading is more selected wouldn't openly welcome the enterprise she tried to initiate. But this novel is patronising at all to people who don't happen to be bookish. It is simply a tale about the struggle of a failed idea. The many small comic and tragic stories that ensue are incredibly engaging. The relationship between Florence and her assistant is very touching. It is a sharp observation of a relationship between two generations. I thoroughly recommend that anyone should sit down in a cosy chair and read this novel.

If Only There Were More Than Five Stars:
Penelope Fitzgerald's The Book Shop has entered the ranks of my favourite books, along with Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in This Castle and Geoff Ryman's Was, and a novel I that try to push on to all of my friends. Similar to Jackson's book, this beautiful little novel is about one person's struggle against a community's narrow mindedness. The story is told with the author's usual degree of gentle humour over icy emotions, with quirky characters developed in an amazingly crisp and illuminating short hand. The reader will identify and fall in love with Florence Green, who has the audacity to open up a book shop in a town that does not have one. One cannot help but catch a little of her optimism and this will drag the reader along and down with Florence. This book is a perfect gem that sparkles and dazzles the reader before it snatches the light away. Highly recommended.