The Bookshop
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The Bookshop
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Narrated by:
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Eve Karpf
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David Nicholls
About this listen
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop.
Hardborough becomes a battleground. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.
©1978 Penelope Fitzgerald; Introduction David Nicholls 2013; Preface Hermione Lee 2013 (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedCritic Reviews
‘Reading a Penelope Fitzgerald novel is like being taken for a ride in a peculiar kind of car. Everything is of top quality – the engine, the coachwork and the interior all fill you with confidence. Then, after a mile or so, someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window.’ Sebastian Faulks
‘Wise and ironic, funny and humane, Fitzgerald is a wonderful, wonderful writer.’ David Nicholls
‘Its stylishness, and this low-voiced lack of emphasis are a pleasure throughout, its moral and human positions invariably sympathetic. But it is astringent too: no self-pity in its self-effacing heroine, who in a world of let-downs and put-downs and poltergeists, keeps her spirit bright and her book-stock miraculously dry in the damp, seeping East Anglian landscape.’ Isabel Quigley, Financial Times
‘Penelope Fitzgerald’s resources of odd people are impressively rich. Raven, the marshman, who ropes Florence in to hang on to an old horse’s tongue while he files the teeth; old Brundish, secretive as a badger, slow as a gorse bush. And this is not just a gallery of quirky still lives; these people appear in vignettes, wryly, even comically animated…On any reckoning, a marvellously piercing fiction.’ Valentine Cunningham, TLS
What listeners say about The Bookshop
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Rowena Buchanan
- 15-06-2020
It was good to read between other stories
This was deemed a bestseller, and was good to read between other stories. The narration was good. The whole story is a little slice of the late 1950's and is lovely because of that.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Neicey
- 03-07-2020
Read this if you want to be thoroughly depressed
what an awful story of awful people. I found it absolutely excruciating. I kept listening as I couldn't believe that nothing good would come of it.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Akhila Hughes
- 21-07-2018
Depressing
Great writing depressing people depressing place depressing story. Just really writing these last words because A review has to be a Min of words.
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