The Bookshop

By Penelope Fitzgerald

From the Booker Prize-winning author of ‘Offshore’, ‘The Blue Flower’ and ‘Innocence’ comes this Booker Prize-shortlisted story of books and busybodies in East Anglia.

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Mar 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9780007373833

Penelope Fitzgerald

PENELOPE FITZGERALD wrote many books small in size but enormous in popular and critical acclaim over the past two decades. Over 300,000 copies of her novels are in print, and profiles of her life appeared in both The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. In 1979, her novel Offshore won Britain's Booker Prize, and in 1998 she won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for The Blue Flower. Though Fitzgerald embarked on her literary career when she was in her 60's, her career was praised as "the best argument ... for a publishing debut made late in life" (New York Times Book Review). She told the New York Times Magazine, "In all that time, I could have written books and I didn’t. I think you can write at any time of your life." Dinitia Smith, in her New York Times Obituary of May 3, 2000, quoted Penelope Fitzgerald from 1998 as saying, "I have remained true to my deepest convictions, I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?"

Reviews for The Bookshop

[grandpahobo_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a nice little story. Its amusing and very proper. However, the conclusion left me asking what the point?

[2wondery_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I finally abandoned this as too depressing midway through.

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

What on earth was the Booker committee thinking when they shortlisted this? More to the point, why do all these other 'community' reviewers think this is such a good book? These questions suggest that I am out of step with the rest of the world, which of course is true, but I think there is also some other factor at play. Many people describe this as humerous, but I'd be surprised if I smiled more than once in the hundred or so pages that I read before pulling the plug. Humour is, after all, a very personal thing. I wonder if the book is also somewhat dated now? I also felt as though none of the characters was treated with sufficient depth for my liking. I suspect I might have given it a higher rating if I had continued to the end, but I'm just too old to spend time on anything that isn't giving an adequate return for my investment (thanks for permission, Nancy Pearl).

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My expectations were a bit Pym-ish. The Bookshop promised all sorts of apt visions, austerity, widows, spinsters, modernity, the Church. Well there were traces of such harbored within, but the bend bent elsewhere. I was actually reminded of Murdoch's Sandcastles, the provincials backbiting like crabs, human spirit crushed by petty jealousy. It was perfect day for this here: cats and dogs all day.

[jon1lambert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The prejudices and idiosyncrasies of provincial, small-town people are illustrated perfectly and amusingly in this short novel. They really do not deserve a bookshop or a bookseller in their town. Florence Green need not hang her head in shame.

[ashleytylerjohn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a tough one. It's ostensibly a very good book, but I (a) wasn't swept away with an overriding desire to read/finish it, and (b) was left in a somewhat disturbed state by it all. Which is probably a good thing, in one way, but it doesn't vault such a book into favourite status by any means. For someone who loves books (as I do) and generally wants their protagonists to succeed (I'm empathic!), this is a hard case, like animal lovers reading about doggy torture, or parents reading about terminal children.

I read this in response to a Goodreads request--I'd finished Hotel du Lac (where very little happens) and wondered who else wrote in a low-stakes kind of idiom. Fitzgerald was suggested, so I gave it a whirl. But while Brookner's book was at times humorous and delightful, and, say, Barbara Pym even more so, this one just felt bleak. Bleak and sad. Bleak, sad, and kind of cruel, like Lars Von Trier's Dogville but with a bookshop owner instead of Nicole Kidman.

When I wanted small, I guess I wanted small and sweet, not small and unbelievably depressing.

So three stars from me, sigh. But if she's written anything more cheerful, I'm definitely up for it!

[figgles_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lovely, gentle, sad book. I purchased it after seeing the film, and feeling that something was a little "off" with the adaptation. Reading the book confirmed that. Very little happens in the book - Florence Green, widow, uses her small capital to purchase The Old House (damp and haunted) and open a bookshop in a small East Anglian town. However she doesn't quite fit in and despite support from a number of other outsiders (Raven, Wally the sea scout, her small assistant Christine and the reclusive Mr Brundish) she is no match for the local power in the form of Mrs Gamart who cannot bear to see someone else succeed. Beautiful writing and very delicate and gentle. The film overplayed and exaggerated almost everything - read the book instead.

[labfs39 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Florence Green lives in small English town and is recently widowed. Using her limited knowledge as an employee at a bookstore in her youth and a small sum of money she inherited, Florence decides, against the advice of several naysayers, to open a bookstore. The building is a major "fixer-upper" and is haunted by a rapping poltergeist, but Florence perseveres in following her desire to reinvent herself and her life.Despite some initial mishaps, and with the help of a precocious tween assistant, Penelope does make a go of things, and is even complemented by the venerable aristocrat who keeps himself aloof of village happenings. This final insult to the local self-named grand dame of the arts (and a suggestion of disapproval of her stocking the sensational novel, Lolita), Penelope is finally defeated. In the winter of 1960, therefore, having sent her heavy luggage on ahead, Florence Green took the bus into Flintmarket via Saxford Tye and Kingsgrave. Wally carried her suitcases to the bus stop. Once again the floods were out, and the fields stood all the way, on both sides of the road, under shining water. At Flintmarket she took the 10.46 to Liverpool Street. As the train drew out of the station she sat with her head bowed in shame, because the town in which she had lived for nearly ten years had not wanted a bookshop.This novel was particularly thought-provoking and sad for me, as I have just moved to a town without a bookstore. What makes a town not want a bookstore? Given the demise of the local, independent bookstores over the last dcade, it made me think about the people like Florence Green, who are put out of business, largely by Amazon. Is my purchasing from the behemoth to save a few dollars and have the convenience of delivery, so I don't need to go to a library or bookstore, worth the loss of culture bookstores bring to a place? It led me to wonder, what makes a country anti-intellectual, and am I contributing to that phenomenon?

[richardderus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rating: 5* of fiveThe Publisher Says: In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop - the only bookshop - in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors' lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence's warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one. My Review: Florence Green is my current idol of Resistance. She has lived quietly and unassumingly in Hardborough, a small East Anglian seaside town, and realized that her life was simply passing and not being lived. So she took her small inheritance and opened a bookshop.A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.Of course, she takes out a loan against the freehold of her premises to start the business. The sums are risible by today's standards, since this is 1959, but they seem enormous to Mrs Green. She sets out to stock her business with the remainder stock of her former employers in London, then contacts publishers' sales agents to visit and display their wares:Those who made it {to her shop} were somewhat unwilling to part with...what Florence really wanted, unless she would also take a pile of novels which had the air, in their slightly worn jackets, of women on whom no one had ever made any demand.This being 1959, a certain degree of wincing at this self-deprecating, or merely invisibly sexist, humor is to be granted; but Fitzgerald wrote the novel in 1977 or thereabouts, as it was first published in 1978. Was this mildly misogynistic sally meant to be read with a raised eyebrow, or was she simply oblivious to its sexism? I don't know, but I'm guessing it wasn't ironic based on the tone of the tale. It's very funny either way.Life as a business proprietor is not stress-free. Mrs Green is a busy, busy woman. Many are the factors she is required to balance in her running of the business. Yet summer comes but once a year, and after all what good is living in a seaside village if the sea is invisible?She ought to go down to the beach. It was Thursday, early closing, and it seemed ungrateful to live so close to the sea and never look at it for weeks on end.It's always seemed odd to me how many people I know here in my own seaside city who simply don't pay the slightest attention to the ocean that surrounds us!Mrs Green has failed to do one crucial thing in opening her shop: Get the town's Great and Good on side. In fact, when she is invited to the local county set's meeting place, she receives a very simple and direct order to cease and desist her plans to open her shop in the Old House, which it transpires the local grande dame wishes to put to another use. To everyone's blank surprise, she does not back down. The invisible battle lines are drawn:She had once seen a heron flying across the estuary and trying, while it was on the wing, to swallow an eel which it had caught. The eel, in turn, was struggling to escape from the gullet of the heron and appeared a quarter, a half, or occasionally three-quarters of the way out. The indecision expressed by both creatures was pitiable. They had taken on too much.The battles go in Mrs Green's favor...until they quite memorably do not. The quality do not like being told no.But the battles are waged fully! Mrs Green is not one to lie down and say die!Courage and endurance are useless if they are never tested.The tests are, in the end, simply more than Mrs Green has the resources to withstand. The state gets involved. The lawyers and the banks are not on her side. The town isn't willing to pull themselves out of the primordial muck of How Things Are Done to rally to her aid.It was defeat, but defeat is less unwelcome when you are tired.And yet Florence Green stood tall until the last moment, only leaving Hardborough when her very last farthing is needed to buy her way out of the morass that her impertinent refusal to bow before the quality has landed her in.For that reason, I recommend this book for your 45-hating, Resistance fighting, Yule giftee. It will give them a rock to stand on.

[kiwimrsmac · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to love it, I really did, but the ending left me disappointed and empty. I could have given it three stars, except the rest of the story was moving and gripping. But...so much was left unsaid. The ghosts in the house? Who & why? Family? It was a wonderful story, and it had so much more to give, but it glossed over a lot.
I read it because it fits into my reading goal of reading all books about bookstores & booksellers. But although I gave it 4 stars, I'm not sure I'd recommend it. Sorry. I loved it but wanted more.

[bkinetic_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mrs. Green is the little engine that could, but can she defy the odds? There are many interesting characters and humorous episodes and interchanges.

[ameise1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a sad story. Florence Green opened a bookstore in the faith of her village and her a favour to do. Unfortunately this was not the case. From the first moment on, they were just putting stones in the way. She was exploited and departed. She only got support from Mr. Bundish, but in the end this did not help either. She had to admit defeat and leave.I like how Fitzgerald can draw such a strong picture in a few words.

[nbsp_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Best per many, not per me. Woman owns haunted bookshop. Applause for the business/village parts; Boo-hiss for the haunted part.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When I finished this quiet, unassuming book, I was so simultaneously delighted and drained that I felt the urge to go and lie down on the floor, sadly smiling. Fitzgerald possesses the lightest touch; her wit gleams less like a diamond than a knife in the shadows.

[brangwinn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fitzgerald is able to create a detailed backdrop in character and setting for a story about a woman determined to open a bookstore in a small coastal English village. For anyone who has grown up in a small community, you can almost see the ending coming, as she alienates locals and is finally forced to give up her dream.

[libbromus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm sure this happens in real life, and you don't exactly expect a fairy tale ending from Mrs. Fitzgerald, but in this story all the bad guys win. Not overtly and not via evil doings, but mostly by way of their stars aligned and none did for the good guys. It was disheartening. What a bloody bummer.

[autumnesf · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A sad little book about an old woman wants to open a book shop.

[therebelprince · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Culture is for amateurs."

It is now de rigueur to declare Fitzgerald as one of the great neglected English novelists of the 20th century, and I must add my voice to that woeful chorus. Her starkly funny - or perhaps humorous upsetting - style is akin to those great ladies Muriel Spark and Barbara Pym. Her characters, like theirs, often hover on the fringes of good society; the "distressed gentlewomen", Pym often calls them.

Florence Green is one such character, a plain but still reasonably young widow who chooses to open a bookshop in a town that wants to reject her at every turn - even her resident poltergeist wants nothing to do with her. In 10 short chapters, Fitzgerald outlines Florence's unsettling encounters with the townfolk in wry, pointed notes, never allowing us to become either sympathetic or deeply enmeshed in the lives of any of them. Its events are of no consequence, and yet somehow feel staggeringly consequential. And at the heart of it all are questions about how we appreciate culture, how we relate to books themselves, and why we allow our dreams to take hold of us against all reason.

A deeply enjoyable read for fans of ironic British novelists.

[kayis813-163108 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It was okay. Kind of boring and it didn't really seem to have a point but it was interesting enough I guess. It had some nice parts.

[mbmackay · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A quirky little book about quirky people in a quirky little town in England. A delight to read and enjoy.

[lisahistory · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Charming and delightful if somewhat forgettable, a woman opens a bookshop in a town which doesn't really want one, except for an old aristocrat no one sees.

[amaraki-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As I had seen the movie the previous summer, this rather interfered with my reading as comparisons would be made. Surprisingly I liked the movie better, perhaps the only time this has happened. Not the least of which for the somewhat happy ending of the movie that is missing from the abrupt conclusion of the novella. Mostly the movie kept very close to the text of the story, but somehow added greater depth to the characters. On its own I found this novella well paced with lovely prose and lots of understated humour, but again sparse on the characterization -- which perhaps is to be expected in a short work. Nice but not great.

[samsattler · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was surprised to learn that Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1978, surprised primarily because the book is so short that it does not allow for its multiple characters to be much developed before the book reaches its quick ending. I should say, too, that I stumbled upon the well-received 2017 movie version of the book a few weeks ago and watched that film before reading the novella (it’s between 118 and 163 pages long depending on which edition is chosen). The movie was more depressing than it was sad, but even then I was intrigued enough by some of the characters that I decided to read the book in order to learn more about them and their motivations. But it turns out that, the screen play does a better job of exploring the characters than the book does – and that’s not at all what I expected to find.The Bookshop is the story of Florence Green, a middle-aged widow who in 1959 moves to the fictional English seaside village of Hardborough to open the only bookshop in town. It is only after she buys the Old House and opens the shop that Florence learns that one of the most influential women in Hardborough wants to close her down and use the Old House for her own purposes. It is no small accomplishment that the bookstore ever manages to open its doors in the first place, as the Old House is a damp old wreck when she moves in and is even haunted by the Rapper, a noisy ghost that refuses to vacate the property. Florence does manage to open the doors even though the only hired help she can afford is a ten-year-old girl who comes in on Saturdays and after school every day. Florence, though, gets lucky when the little girl turns out to have excellent organizational skills that can be put to good use in a bookstore – especially a shop whose owner knows so little about running such a place herself. And when Florence decides to feature Vladimir Nabokov’s brand new (to England) novel Lolita in the shop window and sales take off, it looks like she just may make a go of the shop after all. The ruthless Mrs. Gamart, however, never gives up her campaign to rid the Old House of its books and bookstore-owner so that she and those who think like her can convert it into an arts center. She is always there, more or less in the background, pushing others to do her will, and before long Florence is forced to take the threat seriously. Can she actually be evicted from the Old House despite the fact that it is both her only home and source of income? More importantly, will she?Bottom Line: The Bookshop has an interesting story to tell but the sparseness of so many of its characters makes it difficult to believe. That Mrs. Gamart is an amoral woman whose personality intimidates her ex-military officer husband is obvious. What is not so obvious is why a seaside tourist village is filled with so many people just like her. I suspect that if that backstory had been explored in The Bookshop, I would have enjoyed it much more than I did.

[absurdeist · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

NEWS ALERT: Indie bookshops are closing left and right at alarmingly rapid rates everywhere; in both big cities like Chicago and English villages like Hardborough, the latter the quaint setting for Penelope Fitzgerald's, Man Booker shortlisted, second novel, The Bookshop; they're being shut down, the bookshops, as if they were sweatshops run by misers, seemingly every time you scan the morning headlines in Shelf Awarenes.Old news, bookstore closures? It wasn't old news in 1978, when Penelope Fitzgerald published The Bookshop, perhaps adding prescience to the poignancy already in glowing abundance in these bittersweet, but ravenously delectable pages about a courageous, recent widow's dream to do something (and to be somebody) different: Independent for the first time in her life: A bookseller. Brave woman.Florence Green (a pity her last name is so descriptively apt concerning her business acumen), itching for adventure and a means of making her own way in the world for the first time since her husband's death, takes a huge, optimistic gamble, and opens her bookshop in a long-vacated, leaking, draughty and dilapidated, antiquated structure befitting its name - "The Old House" - in an English village with an ominous name of its own: Hardborough. Indeed it's hard starting up any business anywhere, but a bookshop in an establishment as rickety and sodden as the Old House? Can you imagine? Isn't dampness and draught anathema to pulp? Water-stained books are not fast sellers.And isn't location everything too for a bookshop? Florence Green has chosen a site in an everybody-knows-everybody hamlet that has one unpaved road in, and just that same frequently flooded and muddied (when the high-tide rolls in) road out. Might be easy to open a bait-and-tackle shop at such a site, but a bookshop?And did I mention that the Old House is haunted by what the locals term a "rapper"? An entity that, no, does not wear a baseball cap sideways nor work double turntables simultaneously, but whom makes a lot of racket nonetheless. And knocks over books and sticker displays. The ghostly nuisance of such a benign poltergeist!Despite the odds stacked against Florence; and despite Violet Gamart and her uppity political power dead-set against the bookshop, for awhile, with the aid of an eleven year old girl, Christine Gipping, as well a part-time bookkeeper, and the most honorable auspices of the veritable heart and soul of Hardborough itself, Mr. Brundish, Florence Green is able to make a good go with her bookshop, and for a year, she's relatively, surprisingly, successful. Even her lending library is a smash.But not everyone is so thrilled with her success. Surrounding business's are jealous. Violet Gamart, (the Ice-Queen of Hardborough) isn't happy, either, her fairy-tale visions of the Old House becoming an "Arts Centre" for the town thwarted by this naive entrepreneur, Florence Green.Florence Green would've been wiser not to give Christine Gipping, her eleven-year-old, impulsive part-timer, so much authority in the lending library, turns out, especially on the occasion of Violet Gamart's very first visit to the store. Precocious Christine, strictly abiding by the checkout lending rules, "intervenes" rather rudely (but within her rights!) as Violet Gamart attempts to procure for herself a volume out of turn. There's a waiting list, Lady, abide by it! A swift ruler-thwack to Violet's knuckles and...The Old House Bookshop, unfortunately, inevitably is doomed. Sorry to not warn of spoilers, but the book (a novella really) lets you know soon that there won't be a happy ending.Penelope Fitzgerald's style is concise and fast paced, but full like a hearty homecooked meal leaves you full. The book is small, though, diminuitive, a diamond: perfect in equilateral literary geometric dimensions that only enhance its shiniest story sparkle. The Bookshop, in 123 pages, sparkles like that perfect diamond, more rare jewel than slim, rarely read book nowadays...and then some.

[nancynova · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

bookbox; set in a fictional english tiny economically depressed tiny town, Florence takes on renovating an old house into a bookstore and lending library. Some townfolk cheer her on, others trying to thwart the effort.

[vivienner_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those books that kept me up all night to finish it. I hoped things would work out for Florence Green and her move to an East Anglican town to open a bookshop in her home. But she had the town's aristocratic Mrs Gamart against her so it was a losing battle from the beginning. Not only is Florence occupying a building Mrs Gamart wants for an Art Centre, but she's new to the town, an incomer, with no established supporters. Even the eleven-year-old helper blames Florence for her failure to pass her eleven-plus exam and gives her the cold shoulder. Fitzgerald has given us a story that is beautifully written, but with many mean-spirited characters and characteristics we'd prefer never to experience. However, I will look for more by Fitzgerald.

[petroglyph_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Penelope Fitzgerald is rapidly becoming a new favourite author. In [The bookshop], she presents the story of a small English village and its response to the opening of a bookshop -- and especially to the lady who runs it. The focus lies not so much on the quirky villagers that tend to populate these kinds of books, but rather Fitzgerald’s no-nonsense understanding of human flaws as filtered through social negotiations around how to handle irrational pettiness and whether or not to indulge in it. Social commentary through refusing to overtly comment on social issues: a very memorable book. One thing I absolutely have to mention, though, is the humour, which is so dry, so sneaky and so tongue-in-cheek that you might miss it: Fitzgerald’s voice tends to the matter-of-fact tone and her humour sometimes required a double-take. Definitely one of the standout features. Another is the ending, which, oh dear, is absolutely perfect, and I won’t spoil it for you. (If your copy has an introduction, read it last!)I thought The bookshop was a marvellous, brilliant book. Probably one of the best I’ll read this year. It has only strengthened my resolve to read more by Fitzgerald.

[widsith_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reading this in conjunction with other nominees for the 1978 Booker Prize, like Jane Gardam's God on the Rocks and Kingsley Amis's Jake's Thing, really does give you this impression of 70s England as a place of small towns, insular gossip, hostility to new ideas, and a preoccupation with quotidian concerns over any sense of the wider world. In a sense, fair enough – but one does slightly yearn for a little more ambition and pizzazz in the novelling world. By comparison, Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea, which I didn't entirely love when I read it years ago, seems like a worthy winner; it took those parochial English elements and made them into something archetypal, something mythic and strange and genuinely literary.That said, there is loads to like about most of the choices and this brief study in disillusion and small-town rivalries is no exception. Fitzgerald teeters on the edge of tweeness but her writing is unsentimental enough and her characters believable enough to cope with it. My favourite moments came in the unexpected flashes of local landscape and custom – the marshman filing a horse's teeth, the uninhabited housing development slowly falling off the cliffs, the matter-of-fact Suffolk poltergeist inhabiting the bookshop.I was left impressed with Fitzgerald's steely refusal to sugar-coat her narrative's decline and fall – even if, for me, it was hard not to wish she'd found a way to sublimate it all into something a bit more transcendent at the end. But Britain in 1978 was clearly about as untranscendent as you can get.

[fliss88_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An odd little story. In a way nothing happens and yet, a woman arrives in a small village, opens a bookshop, is bothered by a poltergeist, has some moderate success and then all of a sudden it all goes belly up.

[timbazzett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've wanted to read this book for years, and now I have. First published in England in 1978, it took nearly twenty years before it was published here in the U.S. I found it at an AAUW book sale earlier this month. THE BOOK SHOP is a title that naturally catches the eye and attention of booklovers. It is an absolute gem. A small one, perhaps, at just over 120 pages, but it gleams gorgeously in its perfection. Fitzgerald is a genius in knowing how to pare a story down to its bare essentials. Her Florence Green is a character easy to love. A tiny but determined widow wanting to do something with her life, she opens a book shop in the village of Hardborough. Unfortunately the village residents are not all that interested in books, in addition to which she unwittingly makes an enemy of the most wealthy and influential woman in town. A few other characters are so believable. Old Mr. Brundish, Mr. Raven, a ten year-old girl who comes in to help out, and others. But Mrs. Green herself is the heart and soul of the novel, and when things begin to go south for her, you may feel your own heart breaking in sympathy.And yet there are comical moments here too, at least I thought so. Florence's worrying about the possibility of 'local authors' wanting to come to her shop, for instance -"... the books were called 'On Foot Across the Marshes' or 'Awheel Across East Anglia,' for what else can be done with flatlands but to cross them? ... She vividly imagined their disillusionment, wedged behind a table with books and a pen in front of them, while the hours emptied away and no one came ... 'The customers will come in and ask for your book soon - of course they will, they have heard of you, you are a local author. Of course they will want your signature, they will come across the marshes, afoot and awheel.' The thought of so much suffering and embarrassment was hard to bear ..."As one of those 'local authors' myself, I found myself chuckling and smiling, remembering the empty stores, the embarrassment. Hell, I laughed out loud. Fitzgerald knows about books and authors and book stores. But most of all she knows people, and how indifferent and even cruel they can be, perhaps especially in small towns and villages where everyone knows everyone else's business.This is a beautifully written little book, wise and sweet all at the same time. It ends almost abruptly, but any other ending would have been wrong. Very highly recommended.- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER