Review

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."

Review

‘Its stylishness, and this low-voiced lack of emphasis are a pleasure throughout, its moral and human positions invariably sympathetic. But it is astringent too: no self-pity in its self-effacing heroine, who in a world of let-downs and put-downs and poltergeists, keeps her spirit bright and her book-stock miraculously dry in the damp, seeping East Anglian landscape.’ Isabel Quigley, Financial Times

‘Penelope Fitzgerald’s resources of odd people are impressively rich. Raven, the marshman, who ropes Florence in to hang on to an old horse’s tongue while he files the teeth; old Brundish, secretive as a badger, slow as a gorse bush. And this is not just a gallery of quirky still lives; these people appear in vignettes, wryly, even comically animated…On any reckoning, a marvellously piercing fiction.’ Valentine Cunningham, TLS

Synopsis

New jacket re-issue of Penelope Fitzgerald's Booker Prize-shortlisted 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.

From the Publisher

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
"Its stylishness, and this low-voiced lack of emphasis are a pleasure throughout, its moral and human positions invariably sympathetic. But it is astringent too: no self-pity in its self-effacing heroine, who in a world of let-downs and put-downs and poltergeists, keeps her spirits bright and her book-stock miraculously dry in the damp, seeping East Anglian landscape." Isabel Quigley, Financial Times

"Penelope Fitzgerald's resources of odd people are impressively rich. Raven, the marshman, who ropes Florence in to hang on to an old horse's tongue whle he files the teeth; old Brundish, secretive as a badger, slow as a gorse bush. And this is not just a gallery of quirky still lives: these people appear in vignettes, wryly, even comically animated... On any reckoning, a marvellously piercing fiction." Valentine Cunningham, TLS

From the Back Cover

"A gem, a vintage narrative…a classic whose force as a piece of physical and moral map-making has not merely lasted but has actually improved in the passage of years."
'New York Times'

In the small East Anglian coastal town of Hardborough, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop.

Hardborough quickly becomes a battleground – for Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done. As a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

"Penelope Fitzgerald's resources of odd people are impressively rich. And this is not just a gallery of quirky still lives; these people appear in vignettes, wryly, even comically animated…A marvellously piercing fiction."
'TLS'

"Solid and satisfying. Every action in it matters, however small."
'Spectator'

About the Author

Penelope Fitzgerald was the author of nine novels, three of which – The Bookshop, The Beginning of Spring and The Gate of Angels – were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She won the prize in 1979 for Offshore. A superb biographer and critic, she was also the author of lives of the artist Edward Burne-Jones, the poet Charlotte Mew and The Knox Brothers, a study of her remarkable family. She died in April 2000.