The Bookshop, reviewed by Simon Thomas

Below, the first in our planned series of reader reviews.

Our guest writer is Simon Thomas of Stuck in a Book, a blog that shows us how much reading we’ll have to do to go on saying we love Modern British Lit.

Our experience of reading PF is much like his–it took us a bit to acquire the skills, and now we know what a goldmine she is. And we love it that we’ve already got a little linked in community–kudos to Lynn Hatwell, our dove grey reader, who has been a PF stalwart for years now.

The review is below the jump.

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Lynne Hatwell, aka dovegreyreader, very kindly gave The Bookshop to me when we met earlier in the year, and it was just the right size to slip into my bag on the train today.

I tried a Penelope Fitzgerald novel last year, Human Voices, but not sure I got round to writing about it on here. It was one of those books which I finished before I quite felt that I’d got into it - the style was a little jabby and awkward, and somehow it didn’t click. And The Bookshop felt the same for the first thirty pages… but then, thank goodness, how wonderful, it all fell into place and hallelujah, I raced right to the end. From being a book I couldn’t get on with, it became one of my favourite reads this year.

Slim and simple, The Bookshop is about Florence Green setting up a bookshop in a small town called Hardborough, in 1959. The business meets genteel opposition from several quarters of the town, but also support from others. Christine, a stubborn and resilient young girl, comes to work as an assistant - and between Christine and Florence a rather touching, but unsentimental, friendship develops. If that sounds remotely mawkish, trust me, it isn’t. Penelope Fitzgerald doesn’t do mawkish. Her writing is spare, very spare, and there isn’t room for emotions - we simply see the people interact, and can quite easily understand the emotions they must be experiencing. How Florence faces opposition, how she accepts Christine’s characteristics and how she changes as a result of the bookshop.

The denouement is subtle and devastating - it involves neighbours acting as they would in a Mapp & Lucia book, where it would be a gentle comedy. Here it is understated tragedy. The Bookshop is a triumph of a novel, and I’m so glad Lynne gave it to me, and that *something* clicked whilst I was reading it.