I'd not heard of Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) until I came across The Blue Flower. I liked the deceptive simplicity of that novel, and planned to read more.

This one was published some years earlier, in 1978, and it's set a couple of decades further back still, in 1959. We follow the fortunes of Florence Green, a widow. She has lived in Hardborough (said to be based on Southwold in Suffolk) for eight years, supported by the small amount of money her late husband left her. And when we meet her, she has decided to buy the Old House (old to the tune of 500 years, and haunted into the bargain), in order to turn it into a bookshop.


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Why...? There are several glimmers of explanation, but the question hangs in the air all the way through. She met her husband at Mueller's bookshop in Wigmore Street (he was the poetry buyer), so there's a bit of nostalgia going on. Now that London business is closing down (an ominous note already), and she can buy stock from them. An attempt to revive the past, then, coupled with an unexpected opportunity?

But there's a more existential reason: "[She] had recently come to wonder whether she hadn't a duty to make it clear to herself, and possibly to others, that she existed in her own right. Survival was often considered all that could be asked in the cold and clear East Anglian air. Kill or cure, the inhabitants thought -- either a long old age, or immediate consignment to the salty turf of the churchyard."

Florence is kind and earnest, but I'd have been on the side of the pessimists, I'm pretty sure... There's nothing to suggest that the people of Hardborough WANT a bookshop (more than, say a fish-and-chip shop or a launderette or a cinema, which the town also doesn't have). Apart from that brief and very different experience all those years ago, Florence has no skills as a bookshop proprietor (which is why the bank manager is dubious). And the market -- for anything -- doesn't seem that buoyant: "Although they were constantly told, by press and radio, that these were prosperous years for Britain, most of Hardborough still felt the pinch... The herring catch had dwindled, naval recruitment was down, and there were many retired persons living on a fixed income."

Hardborough is an isolated kind of place, "an island between sea and river". Over the years it has gradually been stripped of one means of communication after another. The descriptions of this little town, with its terns and its marsh winds, are very atmospheric. Like much of that eastern coastline, it's constantly being aggressed by the sea. On one of her walks, Florence goes past the sad remains of an ill-advised housing estate: "Running to the cliff's edge could be seen the ghost of an old service road, and on each side of it were ruins, ruins of bungalows and more ambitious small villas. A whole estate had been built there five years ago without any calculation of the sea's erosion. Before anyone came to live there the sandy cliff had given way and the houses had begun to slide." It's an environment where it's tough even to survive, for one reason or another.


Happisburgh (pronounced Hazebr'h) is the furthest south we got on that East Anglian coast during our covid-enforced sojourn in 2020. But coastal erosion is a problem all the way along

Massive spoiler here, but the bottom line is that Florence does not succeed... She has her bookshop for a while, but then she loses it.

Fitzgerald's prose is spare and elegant. She packs a massive amount of meaning into a very confined space. She's a good observer, and the novel is often funny as well as sad.

But by the end you have a devastating picture of what it is to fail... Anyone who has ever failed at anything will feel a little stab to the heart on reading that last paragraph:

"In the winter of 1960, therefore, having sent her heavy luggage on ahead, Florence Green took the bus into Flintmarket via Saxford Tye and Kingsgrave... Once again the floods were out, and the fields stood all the way, on both sides of the road, under shining water. At Flintmarket she took the 10.46 to Liverpool Street. As the train drew out of the station she sat with her head bowed in shame, because the town in which she had lived for nearly ten years had not wanted a bookshop."

Fist to stomach...

Hints of failure pop up throughout the book, mind you, building a feeling of inevitability. Very early on, Florence meets Violet Gamart, who you KNOW is going to be bad news. And when reclusive widower Edmund Brundish (whom Florence has consulted on the advisability of stocking Vladimir Nabokov's notorious Lolita) invites her to tea, the motto on the teapot reads: "Not to succeed in one thing is to fail in all." Since she has asked his opinion, he enquires whether she thinks men make better judges of literature: "'I don't know that men are better judges than women,' said Florence, 'but they spend much less time regretting their decisions.'" In a later conversation with Milo North (who does something in broadcasting) Florence insists: "Surely you have to succeed, if you give everything you have." North is not convinced by that argument: "I can't see why. Everyone has to give everything they have eventually. They have to die. Dying can't be called a success."



As is generally the case with failure, though, there are both personal and systemic explanations, and the novel lays these out very successfully.

Florence is courageous. There's no doubt of that. But her bravery is "only a determination to survive", and that's just not enough. Mr Raven, the marshman, sees her desire to open this bookshop as a mark of fearlessness: "That shows you're ready to chance some unlikely things." Based on this observation, he asks her to help him with a horse, and she has to hold the animal's tongue while he files its teeth. I'm not sure of the symbolism here, but it is very clear that "courage" can get you into some disagreeable situations... And Florence, though occasionally showing her mettle, is generally not forceful enough, and allows herself to be pushed around by too many people.

Nor is she equipped to face the changing times. The region is first too isolated, and then, when it does start to catch up, it quickly bypasses her. Eventually, a rival bookshop springs up in a neighbouring town (vaguely inspired by Violet Gamart). Florence's business is shrinking, and she has no way to fight back. And the lending library that she ran from her shop closes, because there's now a Public Library.

Every failure, somewhere along the line, involves some element of not being good enough.



But the environmental factors are decidedly against her. Even if she had been "good enough", it would have been tough to win in these circumstances.

The people around her are partly indifferent, and partly hostile, but the latter group is orchestrated by Violet Gamart, a particularly ruthless woman with many strings to her powerful bow. She lies. She manipulates. She bullies. In fact, she's the British ruling classes at their brow-beating worst. The minute she learns that the Old House has been spoken for, she is clear that her long-standing project to turn it into an arts centre just HAS to be fulfilled. And Florence's fate is then sealed, because this woman will NOT be withstood.

Gamart's first move is to try to persuade Florence that Mr Deben's fish shop -- which he is trying to sell -- would make an ideal bookshop. Early on in the battle of wills, Florence even thinks of backing down. She could go somewhere else, she thinks: "No doubt it was absurd to imagine that she was being driven out, and that the hand of privilege was impelling her to Deben's wet fish shop. She blinded herself, in short, by pretending for a while that human beings are not divided into exterminators and exterminatees, with the former, at any given moment, predominating. Will-power is useless without a sense of direction. Hers was at such a low ebb that it no longer gave her the instructions for survival." Survival again. That word keeps coming back.

But when the resident ghost in the Old House also seems to take against her, she gets the bit between her teeth. She is determined to defy this Gamart woman...



Florence's problem, however, is that she has too few people on her side, and they're too weak in their different ways: The marshman is nice, but inconsequential; Brundish, who comes out of his shell to support Florence, is not physically strong enough; and neither Christine (the youngster Florence takes on as her part-time assistant) nor Wally (Sea Scout and general factotum) is old enough to have any heft to offer; North is too mercurial (and too easily bought). None of them can withstand La Gamart.

Unprotected, Florence experiences blow after blow. Lolita makes money for her, but also brings further persecution (the interest generated by her window display is causing an obstruction, it is alleged). Her lawyer advises her to stop selling "the complained-of and unduly sensational novel by V. Nabokov". By this time, pretty much all the town's tradespeople are hostile. So hostile, in fact, that "it was decided not to ask her to join the Inner Wheel of the Hardborough and Distict Rotary Club". That's hostile... Then an inspector turns up at school to stop young Christine continuing as Florence's assistant. And Gamart's nephew, an MP, comes up with a bill that allows for the compulsory purchase of old buildings under specific conditions -- which, of course, are drafted to make sure that Florence's old building qualifies.

Brundish tries to get Gamart to back away from Florence. Not only does he not succeed, but he keels over and dies shortly afterwards. And that final conversation is later misrepresented to Florence, leaving her with the impression that Brundish changed his mind, and lent his support to the arts centre project after all. This drains the last of her courage. So, the Old House is requisitioned, although letters in incoherent legalese claim to express willingness to offer compensation. Florence, meanwhile, is weary and quiescent: "She didn't mind so much as she had expected. It was defeat, but defeat is less unwelcome when you are tired... And after all, as she now realized, Mr Brundish himself had come round to the idea of the new Centre. For some reason, this idea gave her more pain than the notice of Willingness to Treat."

Of course, the talked-of compensation never materializes... So, she will have to sell her stock to pay off her bank loan.

These final machinations have something of the surreal about them. But they're all pushing Florence towards that last sad train journey.



*_*_*

This is a novel about courage and failure, and the awful truth that having the former doesn't necessarily prevent the latter.

But it also has a lot to say about books. For example, that they have a social hierarchy, as Florence explains while she's organizing them on her shelves (erected by the Sea Scouts, and slightly wonky)... Why wouldn't there be a hierarchy of books, actually? It's Britain.

Mueller's also sent some remainders with their delivery, including some old Everyman editions, with their distinctive endpapers and title pages ("Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, in thy most need to go by thy side"). I remember those...

Florence's paperbacks cost one shilling and six pence... (A decade later, the minimum you needed was two shillings and six pence. I remember because I spent most of my pocket money on such publications.) Paperbacks...: "Cheerfully coloured, brightly democratic... Yet she could remember a world where only foreigners had been content to have their books bound in paper. The Everymans, in their shabby dignity, seemed to confront them with a look of reproach."

Another walk down memory lane was the reference to Bunty, a girl's comic from way back, and beloved of Christine (who never reads books...). I looked up some of the old illustrations, which immediately brought back one or two of the series titles...

Customer tastes are sometimes conservative in this little place. Clients return books: "They're shocked, or say they've detected a distinct tinge of socialism."

Lolita goes down well, however... Brundish pronounces it a good book, and supports its being sold to the good folks of Hardborough: "They won't understand it, but that is all to the good. Understanding makes the mind lazy."

*_*_*

Fitzgerald's book is SO much more powerful than the film (same title, 2017, directed by Isabel Coixet). The movie somehow skims along the surface, recounting the events fairly faithfully, but totally failing to capture the spirit of the novel.

A number of changes the movie makes don't work, it seems to me. The marshman, for example, makes his comment about Florence's bravery when she steps out of a boat onto some slippery ground... So much weaker than the horse tongue incident... Interestingly, the movie leaves out the ghost, which you'd have thought would be awfully film-appropriate. And it completely fudges the ending, offering us revenge and a glimmer of hope (via Christine) that is utterly lacking in the dark close of the book.

Never mind. We don't need the movie. The bottom line is that Fitzgerald was a brilliant writer. She's definitely still on the list.