Her prose is just opaque enough to make you work at filling in a scene, just light enough to make you squint a bit to sort impressions into shape.Ĭourage is Florence’s primary virtue, and as a book lover it takes some courage to read this book. Fitzgerald is remarkably deft in her depiction of the stubbornly stupid bureaucrat, the despotic small-town matriarch. Her nemesis, Violet, decides after Florence has bought the Old House that she wants it for a community arts centre, and schemes and plots to get Florence evicted.

She is a little unsure of her business decisions, but under the influence of her astonishingly capable 10-year-old shop assistant Christine, Florence hardens a bit. She is all determination and forthrightness. Widow Florence Green decides to open a bookshop and buys a haunted, crumbling building in which to sell her wares. Delightful because the world of books, fictional and real, has booksellers like Florence Green, who buys hundreds of silk bookmarks because they are beautiful and hundreds of copies of Lolita because, after taking advice, is assured that regardless of how much money it will make, it is a book worth reading.

Dark because the forces of evil, in the guise of a woman named Violet, seem to prevail. What a delightfully acerbic and dark read this is. I have to begin by saying that I can’t think of how to write about this book without spoilers.

The bookshop by penelope fitzgerald