Rating: 
Summary: True to day to day life
Review: Many have commented on how brief this work is. There is no arguing the point, as "The Bookshop" is brief as defined by the pages it occupies. Ms. Fitzgerald also writes concisely, however she conveys as much or more than many who would take two or three times the length of this work to tell the same story. The result would be no better; nothing more would have been related, and the reader would have just consumed more time.The events in the story come to the reader as they affect the central character. We are not privy to every conversation between other characters, nor do we witness their every thought, their every action. Just as we do day to day, we receive and react to information and events, as we are made aware of them. We share the fears, the suspicions, and the insight Florence has, but that is where it ends. We are not taken away from her to hear the plans set in motion by others; we have little advantage over her in terms of information that we alone possess. I think the book is brilliant because it tells a story the way any of us would have experienced the events if they had happened to us. Ms. Fitzgerald cuts away anything that is remotely extraneous, but what she leaves is beautifully compact and true to life. I have just started her work "The Blue Flower" which is massive in comparison, should be interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: less is less
Review: Penelope Fitzgerald creates little gems--sentences that are so good you keep on reading, hoping the book itself will become more satisfying. But a lot of hors d'ouevres don't make a feast. Just when the story seems ready to go somewhere, it takes a wrong turn leading the reader toward yet more tidbits. Among other things there's a poltergeist, that (who?), like everything in this story seems to have landed there quite arbitrarily. I felt I was reading a set of notes for a novel, notes that are often charming, but incomplete.
Rating: 
Summary: Just like life... it's not enough of a wonderful thing
Review: Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop (Mariner, 1978) One feels the necessity to look askance at any book whose author is compared to Anne Tyler (which seems to be happening a lot these days), but a couple of pages into Fitzgerald's darkly comic tale of political intrigue and I was ready to ditch the comparisons; for one thing, Fitzgerald actually write _about_ things. In this case, she writes about a middle-aged woman, Florence Green, who decides that the town she lives in, in rural England, is in need of a bookshop. It also has an old, abadoned house (appropriately named The Old House) that would be the perfect size for a small bookshop-- so she buys the house and sets up shop. Interestingly, as soon as she buys the house, one of the town's powers that be, a quite disagreeable old bat named Violet Gamart, decides the Old House needs to be a center for the arts. Green and Gamart indirectly mix it up a number of times, and just to add to the fun, Fitzgerald throws in a poltergeist who lives at the Old House and the publication of Nabokov's Lolita. Better yet, at the end of all this, we're thrown the curviest of curveballs-- a villain who turns out to be one of the truly memorable characters in modern British fiction, whose hand in the various plots of Clan Gamart is as invisible and ugly as Kevin Spacey's in Seven. My only problem with this book, and unfortunately it's a rather large one, is its brevity. Many authors would have turned the above into a five-hundred-page novel. To be fair, most of them would be overblown windbags in doing so, but Fitzgerald seems to leave many stones unturned that could have been explored, and the end of the book's summary feel (the last sentence could have been taken from the close of an eighth-grade book report!) is roughly akin to what would have happened had Sebastian Junger cut out the last half of The Perfect Storm and written "well, they all died." Still, it's a quick and compelling read, and based on it I'll be looking for more of Fitzgerald's later work. ***
Rating:
Summary: Edith Wharton meets East Anglia
Review: That this novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1978 is incredible because the thing is only 115 pages long, has a well-defined linear plot, and is starkly realistic. Such is the state of modern fiction that nobody bothered to publish it in the United States until 1997. Edith Wharton meets East Anglia.
Rating: 
Summary: A sad but beautiful little book
Review: Here's a perfect book for a rainy day when the world's a little gray. It can be read in a few hours; it draws you into a small, perfectly-pitched world; and it sends you off with a sad, gentle nudge which leaves you thinking.
Rating:
Summary: Celebrate the Ordinary
Review: Florence Green has a dream. With the little money her late husband left her, she wants to a open a book shop (the only store of its kind)in the tiny hamlet of Hardborough. Thwarted by Mrs. Gamart, the local art enthusiast, Florence perservers in 1959 England. Mrs. Green believes that the property Florence purchased, the Old House, should be used as an art gallery. Businesses are dying fast in the economically struggling village. Instead of supporting the first business venture in quite sometime, Mrs. Gamart and the other villagers are bent on stopping the determined Florence. But Florence has other problems other than a disgrunteled socialite. Her warehouse is damp, resulting in warped pages. The five-hundred-year-old Old House, built out of earth, straw, sticks and oak beams leaks, has seawater in its cellar, and is inhabited by a rather friendly poltergiest. Florence also runs into merchandising, personnel, and distribution problems. The widow Green does have one ally, the town recluse. The story culminates in Florence's ordering of the lastest bestseller, "Lolita," and the effect it has on the townspeople. I would have like to seen more of the poltergeist. The ordinariness of Florence's daily dilemas and her methods to solve them are at the center of this novel. Fitzgerald gets to the heart of just how mean and spiteful people can be to each other.
Rating:
Summary: The one with plot as well as brilliantly drawn characters!
Review: Fitzgerald's novels are character-driven far more than they are plot-driven, OK? In this, they are like the monuments of modernism (Remembrances of Things Past, novels by Gide, Broch, Joyce, Mann, Musil et al.) except Fitzgerald reveals character with preternatural economy. She has a positive genius for the detail(s) that reveals character, and her novels have a considerable range of characters in them, including saints, villains, wizened prepubescent girls, and all manner of muddled adults trying to find or hold onto love, to make a living and make their world less unkind.
Still, _The Bookshop_ seems to me to have a completely clear plot and some clear subplots. I am puzzled by reader comments about lack of plot in this nove. I suspect that at least some of these comments confuse lack of plot with an ending that makes them unhappy._The Bookshop_ IS a devastating book (one misunderstanding in particular made me ache) and it is obvious that unhappy endings make a book unpalatable to some readers. But, surely, not liking how a plot turns out is not a valid reason to claim there is a lack of plot?
On the way to catastrophe, _The Bookshop_ contains much that is also devastatingly funny. And, although I have never lived in Sussex, I grew up in a small town and am ready fervently to testify for the versimilitude of Fitzgerald's portrayal of the small-mindedness, officiousnes, and obliviousness of some of the characters (not that such qualities are lacking in urbanites--one can find these same qualities in, say, _House of Mirth_ as well as in _Main Street_ to take two American examples).
Rating:
Summary: I was disappointed and surprised at how much I hated it
Review: My expectations were based on the rave reviews this author has received in the past, as well as the enticing setting of a bookstore in England, two attractions for me. Unfortunately, the book is bleak, unattractive, spiteful, hateful, depressing, and disappointing. It left me with a very low opinion of humanity, including both the lead character's antagonists, as well as the lead character herself. Why doesn't she fight back? A truly depressing, unsatisfying read.
Rating:
Summary: Rather too uneventful for me
Review: I can admire the writer's style. But the plot seems not only a tempest in a teacup, but also a bit unrealistic. Rather similar to Anita Brookner in tone.
Rating:
Summary: A book of ordinary character....
Review: is how I would describe Fitzgerald's "The Bookshop". It traces out the pattern of quiet lives in a small English town, especially that of Florence Green. Mrs. Green wants to pursue her dream of owning a bookshop (she worked in one as a child) and pushing her life forward in a new direction. The book entails her trials and tribulations of getting her shop up and running, and this is the context in which she interacts with other characters in the book (my favorite is Mr. Brundish). The Bookshop is not a plot-driven book, preferring to sketch out character studies, and offer observations about the pettiness and triviality in small town life. However, I didn't feel I was able to get to know Mrs. Green as much as I would have liked - to get inside her head more. Readers who enjoyed Mme. Bovary, Main Street and Waterland should take the short drive to Ms. Fitzgerald's "Bookshop", being well-acquainted with the lay of the land. For the general reader, while "The Bookshop" is not a great book in my opinion, it is definitely a good one, well worth taking a look at. The book is like Florence Green herself: she may not be everything we've wished for, but she is certainly great company. I look forward to re-reading "The Bookshop" and Ms. Fitzgerald's other writings. (just my 2 cents - your mileage may vary).
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