The Bookshop

A recent review of a new book about Penelope Fitzgerald in "The New Yorker" prompted me to search the shelves of my own used bookshop for a copy of one of her novels. Fortuitously, "The Bookshop" was the one Fitzgerald novel in stock. The author herself sums up her works by saying that they are "...too sad really to be comedies, but not important enough to be tragedies." And this novel is no exception. Florence Green, widowed and childless, decides that her little Suffolk town needs a bookshop. Florence is one of the most endearing characters I have encountered in my recent reading, sweet and trusting, yet forceful when she needs to be. She encounters a formidable enemy in Mrs. Violet Gamart but also a powerful supporter in the reclusive but influential Mr. Brundish. The author's description of the landscape of the Suffolk coast in which her town of Hardcastle is located had me scrambling to my computer to Google up some images. While the scenes were lovely, Fitzgerald's description of the disappearing coastline and the creeping damp, combined with the portraits of the pettiness of the townspeople, does not have me scrambling for a ticket to Suffolk. Although both the characters and the landscape seem to be colluding to defeat her, Florence's unflagging sweet nature and her pluck and determination win the admiration of this reader. And the novel's terse, perceptive prose has won a new fan for Penelope Fitzgerald.