📚 'Rather Dated' March: Penelope Fitzgerald’s ‘The Bookshop’ 📚

Hi @Whosawake Yes! I agree with you that it was a terrible moment when Florence thought she had lost Brundish's support. Milo North was an awful creep and did a lot of damage. I just typed 'Milo Dick'...it suits him!

New to the Rather Dated club- it's a great idea! I enjoyed The Bookshop- like others have said, found the ending downbeat but I liked the wry humour throughout. For me, the saddest part wasn’t so much the closing of the bookshop but that Florence ended up believing that Mr Brundish had betrayed her instead of defending her- that friendship was the only proper bit of lightness in the book, apart from Christine. And Milo North- what a dick. I'm tempted to watch the film just to see if they've kept the ending just as downbeat as it is in the book, I'm guessing not...

Thank you, both! I've not read any of those books (or authors, even) although the women are all on my TBR.
Booker prize lists can be very odd. Still processing the info that Fitzgerald was on the 1998 panel that gave the prize to Ian McEwan's Amsterdam - a truly terrible book.

I don’t remember what I thought about the Jane Gardam, but I loved The Brothers. And I really like Iris Murdoch too.

I’ve read The Sea The Sea, and quite a lot of other Iris Murdoch.
I’ve read Bernice Rubens’ The Brothers, and Jane Gardam’s Queen of the Tambourine, but nothing by K Amis or A Brink.
How funny, I’ve just noticed I’ve only read the women!

I’ve read The Sea, The Sea and love it, although it’s often reviled, I think, and seen as ‘problematic’ among Murdoch’s novels. It couldn’t be more different to PF. But I love Murdoch generally so 🤷‍♀️

Also God on the Rocks, and love that too. I’d have said it was slightly more YA-ish but interestingly, not totally dissimilar to PF in its quirky, offbeat feel.

I don't think there's anything shallow about your preference @MotherofPearl Emotional distance may be more typical of Lit Fic as a genre but isn't it equally a hallmark of violent action thrillers, puzzle-box type mysteries and other genres seen as 'low brow'?
I bounce off a lot of Lit Fic because I value plot and character and can't be sustained by the prettiest prose alone through a novel. In the Meridian interview, Fitzgerald said her approach was to nail down the title, beginning and ending, before writing the rest, which is probably why I do get on with her books.
Out of curiosity, has anyone read any of the other Booker nominees from that year, and if so, what did you make of them?

Forgot I came on to link this 1998 R4 interview with Fitzgerald which has the 😮detail of publishers just lopping the last 8 chapters off her debut novel.
Also much that applies to The Bookshop too, 'I think we need a lot of courage...to get through an average life'.

@Terpsichore I tried to find it too and couldn't, but I did find this brilliant article here.

Nicely put.

Interesting to think about genre. I think despite its 'smallness' this book is definitely Lit Fic with very big themes of Good vs Evil ('exterminators and exterminatees' in its own terms) rather than being human-sized the way The F.M. Mayor was (though also beautifully written, and un-sentimental as you say @MotherofPearl )
That's probably why the 'slice of life' label also feels off - for me, that implies more attention to the mundane for its own sake, rather than to further character, setting or theme, as here.
In hindsight, probably not the most appropriate choice for a 'Slightly Dated' book club! 😅

How utterly infuriating of Robert Robinson, @Terpsichore . And I always liked him in Ask The Family.

I completely understand what you’re saying, @MotherofPearl , about the emotional detachment as compared to for eg The Rectors Daughter, and I do agree. It’s almost the difference EM Forster (??? I think it was him) meant when talking about flat v rounded characters, although I’ve always found something a bit lacking and wrong with that analysis. A better way of describing it, for me anyway, is that I see F M Mayor as sort of inhabiting her characters, inside looking out, whereas PF ( and, I think , Jane Austen) are observing minutely , kind of outside looking in. I don’t think any way is better, and it doesnt affect how much I like a book.

I'm thinking about what you're saying about emotional detachment to the story and to Florence in particular, MotherofPearl. Interesting. Perhaps that's why I'm reading it again :)

Yes, wonderful review, Stella. It’s interesting (tragic) that PF had such a rackety, hand-to-mouth existence for most of her adult life, shouldering the burden of a hopeless husband and struggling just to keep body and soul together for the family, but I think that gave her the ability to write so revealingly about failure and humiliation, and also to be one of life's quiet, devastatingly accurate observers. She sees the little details that other writers often don’t notice, I think.

I can’t find it online now but I’m sure I’ve seen the infamous episode of the Book Programme where Robert Robinson patronised her appallingly - when she’d literally just won the Booker Prize! Yet she kept on going despite that kind of disgraceful behaviour. Thank goodness.

Great review Stella. It's funny, I thought of 'slice of life' but hesitated and didn't write it down. We have read other books that have captured a moment. 'One Fine Day' perhaps? That book is also short and succinct and it's another favourite of mine.

It seems to me as well that this is a painful episode in Florence's life that she may move on from, as inaptonym suggests. She may have made a false start in Hardborough but could reinvent* *herself yet? I don't think she seems very much fond of books either. I'm surprised she didn't read 'Lolita' herself and conferred with Brundish for his opinion.

Well, I’ve finished this late last night, sorry to be late. I can see why some people find it bleak, the descriptions of the landscape contributed to this I feel, the salty soil people are buried in, the flatness, the cows appearing to float in the mist, the marshes and of course the endless damp. And I agree with the observation that it’s hard to see what the POINT of the book is; a meditation on class/sex limitations? A discussion of how small places respond to outsiders? But in the end, I don’t think there is a point, PF’s genius is to write small, incredibly beautifully written vignettes of life (vignettes is not quite the right word, but I didn’t want to put ‘slice of life’). I recently read The Beginning of Spring, which is similarly hard to categorise.
I adored this book. I love the way she writes, and yes indeed, she is a genius with adverbs. I also found it very funny. To pick something at random from the many bits I laughed out loud at: the party where General Gamart (Bruno!) says to Violet, why don’t you tell me what you mean “and I could explain it all slowly to Mrs Green.”
I learned from the article above that @Librarybooker kindly attached, that PF was sixty when she started on her literary career, and I do think you can tell. She’s so excellent at capturing, perfectly, what people are like, I could see exactly Violet, Miles North, Christine’s mum, the old reclusive Mr Brundish. That, and the astute, spare, beautiful prose seem to me to be the product of many years of life experience.
I loved it.

I think the rapper was real. It wasn't visible, but had real-world effects - so at least as real as whatever inhabited Mrs Gamart or Milo North.

Having finished the book again I'm still not fully on Team Bleak but ooof. 😭 Catherine's story hit particularly hard. Her resentment was directed against everyone who had to do with books, and reading....
But thinking how wonderfully un-precocious Catherine and Wally were, it really struck me how unbookish the whole book is. I had a false memory of Lolita playing a much bigger role in the plot, but its contents ended up about as relevant as those overpriced Chinese silk bookmarks, a brilliant rug-pull. If Florence herself ever read Lolita (doubtful), we're not told what she thought, and we never get much of her as a reader at all, or of any character except Mr. Brundish and Milo North. To reinforce the final sentence of the book, it's not a story of books being unwanted - two of the worst blows to Florence's shop turned out to be the opening of the public library and another bookshop which would sell 'a type of novel which which Florence never intended to stock'. What type would that be?

The earlier discussion here may have sensitised me to dates, so for the first time I really noticed this bit from the last (devastating) sentence 'the town in which she had lived for nearly ten years'. What is this phrase doing? Likewise the explicit dating from the first words 'In 1959....' and ending 'In the winter of 1960...[on] the 10.46 to Liverpool Street'. Am I grasping at straws or is there a glimmer of hope, that this is after all just one year in Florence Green's life? Her name reminds that spring returns as winter does?

I agree ImJustMadAboutSaffron about the humour in the book. It's not a completely bleak book.

I think the rapper was real and it was also funny that everyone took it in their stride. It was quirky! I liked it.

It struck me how cruel the townspeople were. They knew Florence. She wasn't a stranger to them. It makes it seem a bit worse in a way that they rejected her and the bookshop.

The humour comes from the interactions between Christine and Florence, the communications between Florence and her bank manager and the antics of the “rapper”. Ironically the biggest success – when Florence decides to stock Lolita – becomes the catalyst for the eventual downfall. I never concluded whether the rapper was real, or a metaphor for all the problems Florence had to surmount. In the end, the town and its residents were simply too provincial and narrow minded for Florence.

I wish some scouts would come and put up a load of shelves for me for a fiver 😏

Thank you @Terpsichore ! That sounds rather dickensian!

I had forgotten about the foreword (by Hermione Lee) and the introduction (by David Nicholls). I had skipped them before reading and they are both good.

I'm enjoying the reread. Fitzgerald compared a scout to a bale of hay ('square and reliable as a straw-bale') 😄
They are marvellous, those scouts!

Another very interesting article about Lee's biog (and PF) here, which mentions the 'Westminster Tutors' ie the crammer - and incidentally reveals that one of her pupils there was Edward St Aubyn!

I've got that biog and must read it, but it’s quite a hefty tome and I keep picking something shorter for my next non-fiction…