HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
Loading...

The Bookshop (original 1977; edition 1997)

by Penelope Fitzgerald

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
2,7931455,098 (3.53)346
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.… (more)
Member:donniek
Title:The Bookshop
Authors:Penelope Fitzgerald
Info:Houghton Mifflin Co. (1997), Edition: 1st, Paperback, 123 pages
Collections:Read 2012, Booker Prize, Your library
Rating:****
Tags:None

Work Information

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (1977)

  1. 30
    A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr (Petroglyph)
    Petroglyph: Both of these books are gentle, mostly quiet novels about an outsider entering a small English town to see through an arts-related project. Their setting surpasses a pedestrian "look at these weird locals". Lots going on in the background if you look for it.… (more)
  2. 21
    The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (suzanney)
  3. 00
    The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho (MyriadBooks)
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 346 mentions

English (127)  Spanish (9)  German (2)  Catalan (2)  Latvian (1)  Italian (1)  Dutch (1)  French (1)  All languages (144)
Showing 1-5 of 127 (next | show all)
An extremely pleasant surprise, this is a beautifully composed and penetrating short novel. Given it's immediacy and cinematic quality, I assumed it had been filmed at some point. It hasn't, so I wish someone would.
  Mark_Feltskog | Dec 23, 2023 |
Bleak. But was interesting in that the setup was in the vein of cloyingly plucky quaint English tale, but instead ended up a bleak tale of a woman beaten by the forces-that-be in small-town-mindedness.
  BookyMaven | Dec 6, 2023 |
"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. ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
Another book I recall liking, without remembering much about it. ( )
  mykl-s | Aug 12, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 127 (next | show all)
Beim Leser bleibt das Gefühl zurück, einem Etikettenschwindel erlegen zu sein, denn die Buchhandlung wird mit einer Passion betrieben, mit der auch ein Fischladen geführt werden könnte. Aber Lesebegeisterung als Eigenschaft der Protagonisten ist en vogue, von Huizings "Buchtrinker" bis zu Cohens "Buchhändler". Das wird wohl dazu geführt haben, den bereits 1978 im Englischen publizierten Roman nun ins Deutsche zu übersetzen. Und "Der Fischladen" wäre ja auch wirklich ein blöder Titel.
 

» Add other authors

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Fitzgerald, Penelopeprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Bustelo, AnaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
D'Amico, Masolinosecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Kada, Júliasecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Krüger, ChristaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Lee, HermioneIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Nicholls, DavidIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Peters, DonadaNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
To an old friend
First words
In 1959 Florence Green occasionally passed a night when she was not absolutely sure whether she had slept or not.
"Now, Mrs Green, if you'd catch hold of the [horse's] tongue. I wouldn't ask everybody, but I know you don't frighten.' "How do you know?" she asked. "They're saying that you're about to open a bookshop. That shows you're ready to chance some unlikely things."
Quotations
"Shall we just have a look at the transactions?" she asked, clicking her silver Eversharp, and using the tone which brought her employer to heel.
She opened one or two of [the books she's arranging in a new bookshop] - old Everyman editions in faded olive boards stamped with gold. There was the elaborate endpaper which she had puzzled over when she was a little girl. "A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."
She kept two of the Everymans, which had never been very good sellers. One was Ruskin's "Unto this Last", the other was Bunyan's "Grace Abounding". Each had its old bookmark in it, "Everyman I will be thy guide, in thy most need go by thy side".
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (1)

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.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.53)
0.5 1
1 19
1.5 5
2 50
2.5 15
3 214
3.5 105
4 217
4.5 28
5 95

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,187,025 books! | Top bar: Always visible