Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop
Aug. 19th, 2020 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howsmyenglishI read a very strange book yesterday. Not strange by itself, but it left me feeling all these things I don't think I felt about a book before. I want to rewrite it. Not because it ended badly, not because I wanted other things to have happened, but because I want to... complete it. There are loose ends, nice beginnings that lead nowhere, interesting developments that don't develop. The strange thing is that in the past, I just disliked such books. But this book I like. I am confused and need to talk about it.
So, what did I like? Well, the title. You can lure me with a title like that anywhere. The fantasy of owning a bookshop (and she even lives in it!) is one of my favorites. I know I'd never be a good bookshop owner, I would be too impractical, partial and socially awkward. But I do like fantasizing about owning one.
Then, there's the language. She thinks about words and conventions out loud, I really like that in an author. An author who thinks about the language she/he uses is someone I might fall for very easily. There is a reason for me to say that Nabokov is one of my - I don't even dare say favorite writers - gods. (and The Bookshop even makes one of his books a... would-like-to-be-instrumental-elements in its absent development... I'll come to that)
Also, it does not have a happy ending. Not even a hopeful one. I have to admire an author who pulls that off, especially a woman.
I also liked her narrative style, even though sometimes I wasn't sure whether it was meant to be like that or actually was somewhat underdeveloped. But on the whole, I liked it.
Now to the loose ends and such. The bookshop owner doesn't appear to read. I mean, here's a woman, who is so passionate about owning a bookshop that she goes against several powerful people in the small coastal town she lives in. She "lives with her books", takes considerable risks, is in danger of loosing everything for those books, but there is not one mention of her reading. Granted, there are not many mentions of her doing anything else, but she did have those herrings for breakfast several times...
And then someone proposes she sell Lolita. And she is torn: to order or not to order? Is it or is it not a good book? Now, what would a reading bookshop owner do? That's right, she'd read it. But this one tries to find out whether or not it is a good book - from others. I understand that she reads reviews, I'd do that, too, but she sends the book to a man she doesn't know (a man who has expressed his admiration and she has reason to trust, but still) and asks him to read it and tell her whether she should order it. And when he invites her to his house (which is quite a revolutionary thing for him) to give his answer, they don't discuss it. It doesn't sound as if she herself has read it at all. She asks him, whether it's a good book for the people of this town. He says "it's a good book, they won't understand it, but understanding makes the mind lazy" (I'm quoting from memory). And that's it. That's all. She orders 250 copies of Lolita - a huge amount, she has never sold so many copies of anything - it becomes a best-seller in her shop, even people from out of town come to buy it, and the only trouble she gets into over this is about crowds of people waiting outside to buy their copy.
Really? It's 1959, we're in a small provincial and very conservative English town, in a town, where everybody knows everybody, where there has not existed a bookshop for a long time, where the most-bought book (before Lolita) was "How to build a speed dinghy" (she's funny, I liked that, too). And in such a place, where people already have grudges against the bookshop owner, no one complains about LOLITA? No one even mentions its contents? I... I really am not sure that Penelope Fitzgerald read Lolita herself. If she did, I can not imagine her using it in her book and... NOT using it.
There are other things as well. There's this well-meaning man, who read Lolita for her. He is a very interestingly strange character. He never leaves his house, never talks to anyone, but he knows all that is going on and is the most respected man in town. He goes out of his house to try and help the persecuted bookshop owner and quite spectacularly dies. Sad and beautiful. But empty. Why not find out afterwards that he corresponded with a friend (because he appears to have had a great number of friends and family, who all come to his funeral, and he did write letters) and looked for ways to help her legally? Or how about the reasons for him to know all the news? Might there be some interesting story behind that? Something? Why not give us at least a little straw? Without it, his whole presence in the books seems a waste.
Same goes for the 11 year-old Christine, who was her assistant, but failed to get into grammar school and turns against books and bookish people. Why develop this relationship with her for the better half of the book (oh, it's a very short book, by the way) to just drop her afterwards?
Did you read The Bookshop? Do you have thoughts to share? It is a very short book, you could read it in a day. I'd really like to talk about it.
So, what did I like? Well, the title. You can lure me with a title like that anywhere. The fantasy of owning a bookshop (and she even lives in it!) is one of my favorites. I know I'd never be a good bookshop owner, I would be too impractical, partial and socially awkward. But I do like fantasizing about owning one.
Then, there's the language. She thinks about words and conventions out loud, I really like that in an author. An author who thinks about the language she/he uses is someone I might fall for very easily. There is a reason for me to say that Nabokov is one of my - I don't even dare say favorite writers - gods. (and The Bookshop even makes one of his books a... would-like-to-be-instrumental-elements in its absent development... I'll come to that)
Also, it does not have a happy ending. Not even a hopeful one. I have to admire an author who pulls that off, especially a woman.
I also liked her narrative style, even though sometimes I wasn't sure whether it was meant to be like that or actually was somewhat underdeveloped. But on the whole, I liked it.
Now to the loose ends and such. The bookshop owner doesn't appear to read. I mean, here's a woman, who is so passionate about owning a bookshop that she goes against several powerful people in the small coastal town she lives in. She "lives with her books", takes considerable risks, is in danger of loosing everything for those books, but there is not one mention of her reading. Granted, there are not many mentions of her doing anything else, but she did have those herrings for breakfast several times...
And then someone proposes she sell Lolita. And she is torn: to order or not to order? Is it or is it not a good book? Now, what would a reading bookshop owner do? That's right, she'd read it. But this one tries to find out whether or not it is a good book - from others. I understand that she reads reviews, I'd do that, too, but she sends the book to a man she doesn't know (a man who has expressed his admiration and she has reason to trust, but still) and asks him to read it and tell her whether she should order it. And when he invites her to his house (which is quite a revolutionary thing for him) to give his answer, they don't discuss it. It doesn't sound as if she herself has read it at all. She asks him, whether it's a good book for the people of this town. He says "it's a good book, they won't understand it, but understanding makes the mind lazy" (I'm quoting from memory). And that's it. That's all. She orders 250 copies of Lolita - a huge amount, she has never sold so many copies of anything - it becomes a best-seller in her shop, even people from out of town come to buy it, and the only trouble she gets into over this is about crowds of people waiting outside to buy their copy.
Really? It's 1959, we're in a small provincial and very conservative English town, in a town, where everybody knows everybody, where there has not existed a bookshop for a long time, where the most-bought book (before Lolita) was "How to build a speed dinghy" (she's funny, I liked that, too). And in such a place, where people already have grudges against the bookshop owner, no one complains about LOLITA? No one even mentions its contents? I... I really am not sure that Penelope Fitzgerald read Lolita herself. If she did, I can not imagine her using it in her book and... NOT using it.
There are other things as well. There's this well-meaning man, who read Lolita for her. He is a very interestingly strange character. He never leaves his house, never talks to anyone, but he knows all that is going on and is the most respected man in town. He goes out of his house to try and help the persecuted bookshop owner and quite spectacularly dies. Sad and beautiful. But empty. Why not find out afterwards that he corresponded with a friend (because he appears to have had a great number of friends and family, who all come to his funeral, and he did write letters) and looked for ways to help her legally? Or how about the reasons for him to know all the news? Might there be some interesting story behind that? Something? Why not give us at least a little straw? Without it, his whole presence in the books seems a waste.
Same goes for the 11 year-old Christine, who was her assistant, but failed to get into grammar school and turns against books and bookish people. Why develop this relationship with her for the better half of the book (oh, it's a very short book, by the way) to just drop her afterwards?
Did you read The Bookshop? Do you have thoughts to share? It is a very short book, you could read it in a day. I'd really like to talk about it.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-19 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-19 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-19 11:35 pm (UTC)I just got to the part where he suggests Lolita to Florence, and I'm a little baffled by the fact that she's not familiar with the book. Even at the time, and even in England, it was very famous. As an avid reader (not to mention a bookseller) shouldn't she have heard of it beforehand?? This is my first complaint with this book so far, actually, and I'm not at all surprised that it leads to the issues you mentioned in your post. I'm already leaning toward agreement that the author hadn't read Lolita yet at the time she wrote this.
(That said, I'm not surprised it was short-listed for the Booker prize! It's very compelling and feels so genuine and familiar, even to someone like me who's never been to the UK)
no subject
Date: 2020-08-20 09:07 am (UTC)