The Bookshop

In 1959, Florence Green, a small, quiet widow living on her late husband's modest legacy, decides to buy a derelict property called the Old House in Hardborough, a remote and declining coastal town in East Anglia, England. She plans to open the town's only bookshop. Florence meets with Mr. Keble, the bank manager, who condescendingly approves a loan but hints that others may have plans for the Old House. Florence refuses to retreat.

The Old House, five hundred years old and built of earth, straw, and oak, proves challenging. Its adjoining oyster warehouse is unusable because its plaster, mixed with sea sand, never dries. The property is also haunted by a poltergeist, locally called a "rapper," which makes sounds of furious physical frustration and scatters objects. Florence moves in and endures the rapper's disturbances while preparing the space.

She receives an invitation to a party at The Stead, the home of Mrs. Violet Gamart, the self-appointed patroness of Hardborough's public life. There Florence meets Milo North, a young man who works in television at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and lives in Hardborough with Kattie, a BBC colleague who visits three nights a week. Milo's apparent gentleness conceals a fluid selfishness; the narrator observes that his emotions have largely disappeared from lack of exercise. When Mrs. Gamart approaches, she praises the bookshop venture but reveals her real purpose: She wants Florence to give up the Old House so it can become an arts center. After Florence leaves, Mrs. Gamart speaks of the plan to well-connected guests, including her nephew, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Longwash, and Lord Gosfield, a neighboring aristocrat. A faint collective resolution forms that something might need to be done.

Florence soon realizes that Mrs. Gamart intended Milo, not her, to run the proposed center. She nearly agrees to vacate the Old House. Her resolve revives when the rapper attacks her at the backhouse door, slamming it violently and sending her sprawling onto the brick floor. The rapper had never before invaded the backhouse, and the injustice of this breach reignites her determination. She decides that neither the supernatural nor the human forces arrayed against her will stop her.

She instructs her solicitor, Mr. Thornton, to finalize the purchase, and in May the stock arrives from Müller's, the London bookshop where Florence once worked and met her late husband. Sea Scouts organized by Raven, a local marshman, put up the shelving. On the eve of opening, a black-bordered letter arrives, delivered by Wally, one of the scouts, from Mr. Brundish, a recluse descended from one of the oldest families in Suffolk, wishing Florence well and offering to subscribe to a circulating library. Raven suggests Florence hire an assistant. Christine Gipping, a ten-year-old with broken front teeth and blunt energy, takes charge immediately.

The shop opens to modest success, and Florence establishes a lending library. Milo visits and suggests she order Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. When Mrs. Gamart finally visits the shop in late October, the encounter goes badly. While Florence is distracted by an uninvited watercolourist who barges in to hang paintings, Christine raps Mrs. Gamart across the knuckles with a ruler for handling other subscribers' books. Mrs. Gamart leaves in fury, and Florence prioritizes consoling Christine over apologizing, a fateful choice. She sends Christine to deliver an inspection copy of Lolita to Mr. Brundish with a letter asking whether it is a good book. An invitation to tea at Holt House, Brundish's home, follows.

At Holt House, Brundish delivers his verdict: "It is a good book, and therefore you should try to sell it to the inhabitants of Hardborough. They won't understand it, but that is all to the good. Understanding makes the mind lazy" (101). He then tells Florence she possesses courage in abundance. The narrator notes that "loneliness was speaking to loneliness, and that he was appealing to her directly" (102). Florence struggles to respond, and the moment passes.

Florence orders 250 copies and arranges them in pyramids in the shop window, drawing crowds from miles away. Mrs. Gamart's solicitor threatens legal action, and Florence's own solicitor advises her to stop selling the novel. Florence defies the order, eventually sending Thornton a single-word reply calling him a coward. The police decline to prosecute, and the shop earns over eighty pounds profit in a single week. Christmas trade flourishes, but Florence's alliances erode. Local tradespeople resent her success, and she is not invited to join the Inner Wheel of the local Rotary Club. Meanwhile, Mrs. Gamart's nephew introduces a Private Bill in Parliament empowering local councils to compulsorily purchase pre-1549 buildings not used for residential purposes. Florence reads about it but concludes it cannot affect her, since she lives in the Old House.

The following year, Christine fails her eleven-plus exam, the standardized test determining whether children proceed to grammar school or the less prestigious Technical school. She leaves the bookshop bitterly, her resentment directed against everyone associated with books and reading. A rival bookshop opens in nearby Saxford Tye, financed by Lord Gosfield. Florence's lending library closes when a new public library opens in town, and her trade contracts steadily.

Milo offers to work as Florence's assistant but proves lazy, shutting the shop whenever she leaves. The Private Bill passes with a critical amendment: The buildings are now subject to compulsory purchase even if currently occupied, provided they stood vacant for more than five years at any time in the past. This ensnares the Old House, which was empty for years before Florence bought it.

In early October 1960, Mr. Brundish makes a final effort to save Florence. Despite failing health, he labors across town to The Stead and tells Mrs. Gamart bluntly to leave Florence alone. He proposes an alliance to fight the compulsory purchase, but Mrs. Gamart yields nothing. Halfway across the street after leaving, in full view of Hardborough, Brundish collapses and dies. General Gamart, Mrs. Gamart's husband, later tells Florence that Brundish came to congratulate Mrs. Gamart on the arts center, a lie Florence has no way to challenge.

A month after Brundish's death, the Old House is requisitioned under the new Act. The oyster warehouse could have served as an alternative property to satisfy the law's requirements, but Florence has already ordered it demolished. Her solicitors find that compensation is unlikely: Books are legally classified as ironmongery, and the house may be deemed unfit for habitation due to damp. An inspection of the cellars was conducted by John Gipping, Christine's father, who was let in by Milo. Milo also signed a deposition stating the damp had made him unfit for work. When Florence confronts him, he explains that they asked him rather often and it seemed the easiest thing to do.

The bank manager requires Florence to sell her stock and her car to repay the loan. She is left with nothing except two Everyman editions, volumes from a classics reprint series. In the winter of 1960, Wally, the faithful Sea Scout, carries her suitcases to the bus stop. The floods are out, and the fields stand under shining water on both sides of the road. Florence takes the bus to Flintmarket and the train to Liverpool Street. As the train pulls out, "she sat with her head bowed in shame, because the town in which she had lived for nearly ten years had not wanted a bookshop" (156).