Listen to a sample
The Bookshop
- Author
- Penelope Fitzgerald
- Narrator
- Eve Karpf, Stephanie Racine
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Publish Date
- 15 December 2016
- Run Time
- 4 hours 7 minutes
- Format
- x-book®
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Fantasy, Traditional or cultural fiction and true stories, tales and retellings, Narrative theme: social issues / social problems, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Narrative theme: sense of place, Fiction in translation
- Rating
- 5.0 (1 review)
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What to expect
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.
Critics Review
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‘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
User Reviews
Book 5.0
Narration 2.0
-
5.0 2.0
Amazing story telling by P. Fitzgerald but the narration made the 40 year old protagonist sound a lot older which was lost impact at times
Aimz 2022-08-16
Details
- Author
- Penelope Fitzgerald
- Narrator
- Eve Karpf, Stephanie Racine
- Duration
- 4 hours 7 minutes
- Release Date
- 15 December 2016
- ISBN
- 9780008233075
- Format
- x-book®
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Fantasy, Traditional or cultural fiction and true stories, tales and retellings, Narrative theme: social issues / social problems, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Narrative theme: sense of place, Fiction in translation
- Rating
- 5.0(1 review)
- Narration
- 2.0(1 review)
Synopsis
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.
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