Shelved Dreams in Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop
In honor and memory of Penelope Fitzgerald, who passed away in May, this month's column will review her novel The Bookshop. Fitzgerald was a late literary bloomer; she began writing and publishing novels (two completely different activities) when she was in her 60's. Offshore won Britain's Booker Prize in 1979, and The Blue Flower was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Prize in 1998.
The Bookshop offers a mordant look into the petty grievances of a small obstinate community, appropriately name Hardborough. Fitzgerald (as quoted in her obituary published in the May 3rd edition of the New York Times) said of her characters: "I have remained true to my deepest convictions, I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?" Indeed, The Bookshop wryly recounts the story of Florence Green, who becomes increasingly cognizant of her shortcomings in lieu of the obstacles her community places in front of her. As her surname simultaneously implies, she's both a bit naive to the venomous undermining of her neighbors and a bit new to the world of business.
Florence, a widow (like Fitzgerald), esteems to open a bookshop in her small community, which is peopled with eccentric inhabitants, each with his or her own agenda. From the opening paragraph, Florence is predestined to fail. She is riddled with indecision as she ponders whether or not to purchase a small property, called the Old House, to turn into her bookshop. Florence recalls having "once seen a heron flying across the estuary and trying, while it was on the wing, to swallow an eel which it had caught. The eel, in turn, was struggling to escape from the gullet of the heron and appeared a quarter, a half, or occasionally three-quarters of the way out." She realizes that each creature has "taken on too much," as will she. Sometimes Florence is the heron as she tries to succeed with her shop, and other times, she's the eel being swallowed whole by her community.
The Old House has remained vacant for many years, and nobody shows much interest in it until Florence decides to purchase it. Violet Gamart, the archetypal society woman, desires to turn Old House into an arts center. The bank gives Florence a hard time. Even the spiritual world conspires against Florence. Poltergeists, or rappers as they are labeled in the novel, inhabit the place. Florence, however, remains nonplused and forges ahead. Customers only trickle in, more out of curiosity than out of any real inclination to purchase books, as they eagerly wait for Florence's failure.
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