[issybird]

Originally Posted by gmw

I can't speak for others, but I will anyway . When an avid reader sees the title "The Bookshop", they have different expectations* than they would to a title like "The Souvenir Shop", or "The Widget Shop" or whatever. Books, to an avid reader, are not mere commodities, but that is exactly what we get with this story.

Well, they are and they aren't. It won't do to be sentimental about the stock; bookselling requires the same kind of hard-headed business decisions that selling widgets does. The single smartest thing Florence did, in fact, was ordering those 250 copies of Lolita, and what's that but treating a great work as a widget?

And it wasn't just Florence, when you consider the strictures on the lending library, where the bookstore had to provide so many unreadable books for every desirable one.

I think the next shock was the gradual realisation that there were no contrasting emotions in here. Everyone was miserable, even Violet Gamart - although we might imagine a grim smile of satisfaction after the final page of the book. The most hopeful thing about this book seemed to be, or should have been, opening the bookshop, but we only hear about that in a vague sort of retrospective, with most of any sentiment sucked out.

I didn't read this as hope, but as desperation.

Florence seems to be as lacking in passion as Milo, and is apparently opening a bookshop for no better reason than she had once worked in one.

I agree in general, but even going to work for the a bookshop originally indicates a certain feeling about books, if not for books. I don't have the sense that Florence was a reader, either. Her customers were, but only of things that reinforced their sense of self.

You cannot properly reflect the impact of not working out for the good, if you do not reflect the hopes that have been dashed. There was so little sentiment at the start of this that the failure seemed of little consequence. It seemed to me that Florence would cry about it for a while on the train and then move on; no harm done.

Well, I disagree with this. My impression is that she was destitute, that the bookstore had eaten up all her resources. For that matter, I don't know if it's clear why she fetched up in Hardborough in the first place. She's been there for "eight years of half a lifetime." She's been a widow for 20 years, presumably the half a lifetime. Why caused her to move there in 1951? Her coming is random just as her going is, but it was a catastrophic choice on her part.