The Bookshop - by Penelope Fitzgerald (Paperback)

About the Book

A marvelously piercing fiction (Times Literary Supplement), shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Featuring an introduction by David Nicholls.

Book Synopsis

National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop is "a marvelously piercing fiction" (Times Literary Supplement), short-listed for the Booker Prize.

With an Introduction by David Nicholls, international best-selling author of One Day.

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.

Basis for the major motion picture starring Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, and Patricia Clarkson.

From the Back Cover

A classic whose force as a piece of physical and moral map making has not merely lasted but has actually improved with the passage of years. New York Times

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.

A beautiful book, a perfect little gem. Kaleidoscope, BBC


PENELOPE FITZGERALD (1916 2000) was one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British fiction. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction for The Blue Flower, the Booker Prize for Offshore, and three of her novels The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, and The Beginning of Spring were short-listed for the Booker Prize."

Review Quotes

"Belongs in the first flight of English novelists writing today" Boston Globe

"A marvelously piercing fiction" The Literary Supplement --

About the Author

PENELOPE FITZGERALD (1916-2000) was one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British fiction. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction for The Blue Flower, the Booker Prize for Offshore, and three of her novels -- The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, and The Beginning of Spring -- were short-listed for the Booker Prize.