Analysis of The Bookshop Novel by Fitzgerald - Essay Example

Nor is this book peculiarly marked by an intensely exciting plot. Rather the book conjures up the reader’s interest and participation through its evocative delineation and chronicling of the prosaically ordinary times, and how the very ordinary people try to come to terms with and succeed against the limitations and constraints imposed by these times (Janik & Jankik 125). The Bookshop is primarily about extraordinary persistence and will be required by ordinary people to fulfill their seemingly simple and readily accessible goals.

It celebrates the courage mustered by the ordinary people against the stifling narrow-mindedness, starkly limiting regimentation, and the blatant injustices imposed by the financial and social inequalities in ordinary day-to-day life (Lewis 27). In that context the prompt under consideration that is “The ordinariness of human lives can never be a measure of the effort it takes to keep them going”, could very well be regarded as one of the themes of The Bookshop. This theme is vividly and emphatically illustrated throughout the novel.

The Bookshop unravels the story of a gentle-hearted widow Florence Green residing in the small town of Hardborough in 1959. Florence is left with a meager inheritance, using which she intends to open a bookshop in Hardborough, that will be the first and the only bookshop in this small town. Florence by her very ability to churn out the success of a seemingly impractical business proposal attracts the wrath and ire of the less prosperous shopkeepers in the neighborhood (St. Clair: Online). By embarking on an innocent attempt to enlarge the worldview of her town’s people, she inadvertently ends up crossing the town’s unofficial art doyenne, Mrs. Gamart. The people of Hardborough are presented in the novel as a bunch of nosy and opinionated simpletons, who simply cannot be blamed for their narrow-mindedness (St.

Clair: Online). The limitations and constraints of marrying this small town in the late 50s get further accentuated by an ever-present lack of communication routes. The residents of this town simply cannot find any creative means of killing time than by maliciously choosing to meddle in other people’s affairs. Not only do they leave no effort untried to dishearten Florence, but rather everybody in the town seems to be pathetically satisfied at seeing her fail, but the town recluse Mr. Brundish. Irrespective of the overpowering odds stalling the success of Florence at Hardborough, it is a kind and encouraging letter from Mr.

Brundish motivates Florence to go on with her objective. When Florence goes to the Bank to solicit a loan to buy the Old House, a damp and dilapidated property infested by a poltergeist, where she plans to open her shop, the manager, Mr. Keble, though initially seems unsure of her talents in running a business, somehow agrees to extend to her a loan. Later when Florence goes to attend a party hosted by Mrs. Gamart, she is abjectly humiliated and disheartened, when she learns of Mrs. Gamart’s plans of opening an arts center at the Old House.