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Cover of The Bookshop

The Bookshop

by Penelope Fitzgerald

Booksellers and booksellingBookstoresEnglandFictionRelations with womenWidowsWomen in the book industries and tradeWorking class women

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. Her warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently...haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: that a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one.

Writing a summary for young readers…

For young readers

Book data: Open Library