The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald

     Penelope Fitzgerald's The Book Shop is a deceptively slender little book.  Within the 123 pages of the book, Fitzgerald packs a crisp, insightful portrait of an English seaside town and a courageous woman who dares to try to battle its resentment toward change and disdain toward anything new. 
     Florence Green is a middle aged woman living in Hardbrough, a little town slowing sliding into the sea.  When she decides to open a book shop, something the town lacks, she comes up against resistance at every turn.  She buys Old House, an ancient building left abandoned for years and haunted by ghosts the townspeople refer to as "rappers",  it seems that opening a book shop will be a harmless endeavor and a benefit for the town.  The town, however, sees it differently.
     Fitzgerald's deft and precise characterizations of the townspeople fill the slender volume with a vivid cast that are immediately recognizable and, most often, sadly believable.  They are typical of inhabitants of small country places where everyone knows everyone's business and conflicts and rivals expose just how nasty and mean spirited people can be to each other.  Her biggest opponent is Mrs. Gamart, a powerful, wealthy busybody who has other ideas for the use of Old House.  She attempts to appropriate the building to house an Arts Center before Florence has even managed to open the shop.  Florence, with no "political" power in the town and little encouragement from others, courageously fights a losing battle with the Mrs. Gamart and ultimately the town as a whole.  Even those in the town who don't openly try to thwart her endeavor turn a blind eye to the attempts to see her fail.
     She hires an 11-year old girl as an assistant and Christine turns out to be a better organizer and manager than Florence herself.  Together they try to ignore the poltergeist that inhabits the book shop and open a lending library within the shop.  The scenes of the first days of the library's operation are some of the most comical and telling in this black comedy.  The suppliers of the library send relatively few of the highly demanded Queen Mary and too many less sought after books that Florence and Christine attempt to push.  When the royal biography goes first to a less prominent citizen who is also the slowest reader,  in town, the ladies hovering over the books opening labeled with each patrons name are each indignant that they were not the first to get it.  Christine is the one who sees that, in the future, the check outs must be discreet to avoid class conflict.  But her hard nosed running of the library eventually lead to further problems for Florence when the young girl raps the knuckles of their fiercest enemy, Mrs. Gamart, when she get pushy in the check out line.  From then on its all out war.  Mrs Gamart tries everything from bringing in inspectors to investigating the employment of Christine in light of a child labor law to pressing for a new law that will ensure her take over of Old House.
    Surprisingly, Florence gains the respect and friendship of the town recluse, Mr. Brundish, the only remainder of the oldest family in town when she seeks his advice on whether or not to stock Nabakov's Lolita.  He embarks on a final, decisive attempt to stop Mrs. Gamart but is ultimately unsuccessful.
     One can't help but root for Florence in her doomed venture and be saddened by her inevitable failure as she discovers  "...a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one."

~ Frances