“Surely you have to succeed, if you give everything you have”…
This quote, from Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel ‘The Bookshop’ (later adapted for the screen) suggests triumph over adversity, a perfect Hollywood ending. But Fitzgerald was a far subtler writer than that, one whose quiet and unassuming narrative actually contains much darker depths.
On the surface, it is simply a tale of a woman, attempting to open and run a bookshop against local pressure.
As I read this slim book, I hardly noticed the impression it was making on me. For it is a novel that grows in stature the more you think about it. And I have found myself thinking about it often.
Take this extraordinary line for instance:
“She had deceived herself by allowing herself to be convinced, for a moment, that human beings are not divided into exterminators and the exterminated”
Although the film adaptation can’t quite match the astuteness of Fitzgerald’s prose, it does have beautifully nuanced performances; particularly the scenes between Florence Green and Edmund Brundish – the touching, not quite love story, at the heart of the book.
