She buys the Old House - “built five hundred years ago out of earth, straw, sticks and oak beams” - which has been vacant for years and is rumoured to be haunted by a poltergeist. (And maybe that’s why the locals are so against a bookshop being set up - women, after all, should be home makers and looking after children, but Florence is widowed and child free and she has a dream she wants to fulfil.) It’s about petty-minded villagers who rail against Florence’s plan to open a bookshop in the small town of Hardborough on the coast - although it’s never made entirely clear why they think it is so objectionable.įlorence is kind-hearted but she’s also determined to do her own thing.

Set in East Anglia, in 1959, the book is essentially a comedy of manners. Perhaps the filmmakers thought that might distract from the main storyline, which is a bittersweet tale about a widow who opens a bookshop against the wishes of the community “elite” who would rather an arts centre was established in the town. While the film is faithful to the novel in terms of dialogue, characters and plot, it somehow fails to capture the subtle humour and the little digs at busybodies and those who wish to keep a good woman down, as it were.Īnd it also neglects to even mention the supernatural element of the storyline in which the lead character, Florence Green, is pestered by a poltergeist (or “rapper” as the locals call it)^^. Unfortunately, the film was a bit on the dull side (despite great performances from Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy), so I wanted to find out whether the book was better. Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop - first published in 1978 - has languished in my TBR for years, but I was only encouraged to read it after I watched the film adaptation last week (it’s streaming on SBS on Demand for anyone in Australia who fancies checking it out). Life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.Ī book about a bookshop seems hard to resist, right?

Fiction – Kindle edition Fourth Estate 156 pages 2006.Ī good book is the precious life-blood of a masterspirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald