"It took less than it should have done to fluster Florence, but at least she had the good fortune to care deeply about something."
--The Bookshop, Penelope FitzgeraldThat's a little bit a description of me.
Penny Cooper's in the book too, in a description of the little girl, Christine, who helps the too-easily flustered Florence in her bookshop:
"At the age of ten and a half she knew, for perhaps the last time in her life, exactly how everything should be done."Penny Cooper, perpetually at the age of eight and a half*, will always know exactly how everything should be done. Or, so she thinks.
In this case, I concur with her:
"It is not correct to change the ending of a book because it's sad."
Penny Cooper did not read The Bookshop--it's short, but it's a grown ups' book.
I did.
It's ... hm, hm, hm... what?
It provides the weird satisfaction (and even enjoyment) of reading about something unpleasant that is beautifully written, like Lolita, a book that figures in this book.
"I don't like this story, but it's sooooo good!"
It's a story of humiliation and defeat:
Florence Green, a widow in her late–middle-age, risks everything to open a bookshop in an English provincial town in 1959. She is undermined by the petty-minded lady of the county abetted by a young man too lazy to care--"What seemed delicacy in him was usually a way of avoiding trouble". Even little Christine is not well done by.
How ever did they make a movie of this? I wondered. The book has a wry humor and the pleasure of its sentences; unless it was imaginatively re-visioned (like the film of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by painter Julian Schnabel), a movie of it would retain only its bleakness.
I watched the trailer, and it seems they made it a sort of love story (it's not), with a hopeful ending (very much not).
[Michael of OCA--You saw it, and advised me against it. Am I right it has a hopeful ending?]
"Ample charm," a reviewer says.
Ample charm?
The book is like a small and quiet version of Lord of the Flies.
"She blinded herself, in short, by pretending for a while that human beings are not divided into exterminators and exterminatees... [Her will-power] was at such a low ebb that it no longer gave her the instructions for survival."I often use my bookshop as a library--borrowing books and returning them when I'm done. This one's so good, I'm keeping it.
_____________
* I used to say Penny Cooper was eight, but now I realize she is and has always been eight and a half.
“Am I right it has a hopeful ending?”
ReplyDeleteI had to look it up to find out. Wikipedia says that Rotten Tomatoes says that the movie “sticks too closely to its source material,” so my guess is that it's the same ending. In the movie, the ending is all about the future, the next generation, and the narrator. Does that sound like the novel? I’m trying not to give away the ending of the movie, in case you do decide to see it.
I’d forgotten that movie entirely — I didn’t even realize that when you first mentioned Penelope Fitzgerald, that I’d seen the movie of the book.
Penny Cooper — is she preparing to do a BBC Boring Talks episode about paper clips? Is she a collector?
MICHAEL: Penny Cooper thinks she is peering through the paper clip like a detective peering through a magnifying glass. (But she can't shut just one eye, so it doesn't look quite right.)
ReplyDeleteI've been meaning to look up Boring Talks since you posted about the Pencil episode--now I will!
I'd assumed you'd read the book AND seen the movie of The Bookshop.
You had advised me against seeing the movie, and now I've read the book and watched the trailer for the movie, I definitely will NOT be watching it!
So no worries about spoilers.
The end of the book is entirely bleak--
SPOILER ALERT:
Florence loses everything, even her car, and leaves town on a bus in humiliation.
The little girl has been kicked out of school and faces life as a ... house cleaner??? (or something that doesn't use her spark).
The old man who tried to help Florence drops dead in the street, and Florence [mistakenly] believes he turned against her.
The only hope is meta:
as a reader of the novel, you know the author, who based the book on her experiences, went on to... write this book!
Love the Penny Cooper photo! I don't know this book. It DOES sound a bit on the bleak side, but also interesting. I hope it hasn't been Hollywoodized.
ReplyDelete