The Bookshop (1978)
Why this one?
Fitzgerald stunned the establishment by winning the 1979 Booker with the slim and understated Offshore. A year before though, she had been shortlisted for her second novel, another concise piece drawing on her own (again very water-y) history. The Bookshop lost out to another water-based classic, Murdoch’s excellent The Sea, The Sea, in a year that was unusually strong for female authors, with previous winner Bernice Rubens and Jane Gardam also shortlisted.
I chose to give this one a go based on a couple of recommendations, and also because I enjoyed Offshore without really getting a sense of who Fitzgerald was as an author.
Thoughts, etc.
The Bookshop is set in 1959, in the insular and isolated seaside town of Hardborough (aka Southwold) at the Eastern tip of England. Florence Green, a middle-aged widow and resident of the town for around ten years, decides to open a bookshop in an abandoned seafront property known as The Old House, which is damp, decaying and apparently haunted by a "rapper" (poltergeist). She faces opposition from influential (and rich) local resident Mrs Gamart, who despite having shown negligible interest in the Old House previously, declares that she wants to use the location to set up an arts centre.
While it's full of brilliant character/class-based humour, it's really a prolonged sigh of a novel. You know from the start that Florence's endeavours are doomed, attempting to bring "culture" to a small town that really isn't interested. The class-based observations are sharp: the Gamarts manifest an outward desire to participate in "culture" but only as a way to maintain their preeminence in the town's sphere of influence; louch BBC employee Milo North is the embodiment of a lazy, self-interested and somewhat half-hearted investment in "art"; and the more likeable working-class inhabitants of Hardborough are too focused on surviving - with the white/brown envelopes of their Eleven Plus results quite literally sealing their future. Most inhabitants of the town are interested in Florence's bookshop only for its supply of boat-maintenance manuals, SAS memoirs, and/or tourist-centric trinkets - at least apart from the brief moment when the scandalous Lolita arrives in store, granting the shop a brief but intense moment of popularity.
The most interesting character is Mr Brundish, an elderly and solitary resident who meets Florence only once. He has effectively recused himself from participation in the town's "culture" (or what there is of it) to live as something of an enigmatic pariah in a crumbling mansion on the outskirts. He is seemingly the only character of real intelligence in the town, but the implication is that this has led him to the conclusion that engagement with the likes of the Gamarts is ultimately so futile as to not be worth bothering.
Brundish's final attempt to help Florence's cause is the perfect symbol of a recurring motif in the novel - expectation of a dramatic conclusion, an uplifting note or climax, spectacularly subverted in one line, so blunt as to make me laugh out loud. David Nicholls' excellent introduction to the edition I read refers to Fitzgerald's fondness for the "dying fall" conclusion in her works, a slow fade rather than grand resolution, which is certainly used to great power here (as in Offshore) - potential hero Brundish's rather literal interpretation of this concept is a tragicomic highlight.
Penelope chillin’
Score
8.5
As with Offshore, it’s slight, but beautiful in its concision. I enjoyed this one a little more as it felt somehow more “complete” and memorable. I’d still run with the judges and agree that The Sea, The Sea was a better choice of winner in 1978, though.
Next up
Next Women’s Prize winner is still in the post, so I’m digging into a bit more Carol Shields in the meantime….
