Fitzgerald is able to create a detailed backdrop in character and setting for a story about a woman determined to open a bookstore in a small coastal English village. For anyone who has grown up in a small community, you can almost see the ending coming, as she alienates locals and is finally forced to give up her dream.

Writes about "unsettled characters who live on the edges... writers and people, who stood at an odd angle to the world". A lovely and quiet read. Time spent with a gentle and quietly persevering protagonist, and as suggested in the forward, an author of "integrity, austerity, understatement, brilliance and a laconic, wry sense of humor". A great discovery.

A gem of a book. A very simple story but so well-written it carries you along until the end. Leaves you wishing for more.

This is an early novel, her first to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Florence Green decides to open a bookstore in a small British town and this sets off a tussle in the community. The bits about her attempt to start a lending library ring true even today in a very different world. The author's stylishness, her settings, and her pleasurable lack of emphasis remind me of my old favourite, Barbara Pym.

This book may be sparse page wise, but what it lacks in pages, it makes up for in characterization and themes. It revolves around a small English town in 1960. The main character, Florence Green, wants her book store to succeed in the worst way. However, the town has other plans. This is a very sweet, funny and engaging read about times past when e-books did not exist.

Although this book was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1978, it has not stood the test of time very well. At 123 pages, it is a spare story of a woman who is defeated in the end.

This novella is about a widow in 1950's small-town England who opens a bookshop, much to the dismay of some other townspeople. Some good character writing. (2004)