Book review: The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

You already know why I bought this one. I have a type. Barnes & Noble, this time, as it was on sale for only $7 or so.

Amazon summary:
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.

This book is really more of a novella; approximately one third of the volume is taken up by an introduction and an essay, for some reason. Anyway, this book was a typical twentieth century English story, with writing to match. That type of writing is comforting to me, because I read a lot of British literature growing up. I liked the slice of life in a coastal rural English town, although I lost track of the characters pretty quickly. Other than that, though, I really disliked this book.

For some reason, the Regina George of the town decides to ask Florence to give up the abandoned, haunted house she's chosen for her bookshop after she already paid for it, and of course Florence says no. We are told repeatedly that this is the kind of small town where everybody knows everybody else's business pretty much immediately, so that woman must have known what Florence was doing before she did it, and she could have asked Florence before the latter put down a down payment. Anyway, this house was laying vacant for like 15 years, which means that at literally any time during this period, this lady could have decided to renovate it and turn it into the fine arts society establishment she wanted. But no, she decided to act like the bratty bully who ignores a toy until another child starts playing with it, and then of course it becomes the only toy that will do, and they do everything possible to snatch that toy away from the other child. 

This bitch invites Florence to her house party before asking her to give up the abandoned house, in hopes that that will make Florence feel obligated to say yes; reports the young girl who works in the bookshop to whatever England's version of Child Protective Services was at the time; sends official uniformed men to the bookshop to try to scare Florence out of it through "official" business-y means; and finally gets her nephew elected to a government position, where "he" passes a law that enables the bookshop to be seized by the government on all sorts of shady legal grounds. In fact, the heinous bitch has her nephew include caveats or whatever that Florence OWES the government money for taking her bookshop away, so she has to sell all her books and probably possessions to pay them!!!! Florence's sole supporter, an elderly rich eccentric, dies after having a private conversation with the bitch where he tells her to leave Florence alone, so of course the bitch tells everybody that he came to her house to tell her he supported her doing away with the bookstore.

 Florence leaves the town, and the last sentence is basically about her crying on the train because the town didn't want the bookstore. But that isn't true! The bookstore was well-used and often visited. It was just that heinous bitch with all that political power that influenced people to kick her out. This better not be based on a true story, or else I'll have to go to hell when I'm dead so I can kick that bitch's ass.

trigger warnings for this book: alcohol mentions, ghost/haunted building, incredible injustice

Score: 3 out of 5 stars
Read in: January 22-3
From: Barnes & Noble
Format: paperback
Status: giving away or selling