A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.

– John Milton

I saw the movie first–usually a mistake unless you have no intention of ever reading the book, and this time was no exception–because while I liked the movie, the book was better.

The book is ALWAYS better.

The story is set in 1959 in the the small coastal village of Hardborough, Suffolk and follows a middle aged widow named Florence Green as she attempts to open a bookshop in a community that doesn’t seem to want one.

This was a thin novel I liked about people I didn’t.

Okay, I like Florence very much and her precocious ten-year old assistant Christine, and the strange recluse Mr. Brundish who is her only real champion in the community. Everyone else? No thanks.

Because Florence dares to do something so impractical and without seeking the blessing and permission of the loathsome Mrs. Gamart, the self-proclaimed matron of the arts in Hardborough (and who I can’t help but picture as Dolores Umbridge from HARRY POTTER), poor Florence invites the ire of all the other shopkeepers and even many of the villagers.

Mrs. Gamart is a woman of influence and means and while she smiles at you, she will stab you in the back and make you feel like that’s what was best all along.

It really is a complete mystery as to why but it seems like nearly everyone expects and even wants Florence to fail.

Why would a community not want a bookshop?

You find yourself cheering for Florence even while you suspect that she’s not going to make it. She’s intelligent but not the most brilliant business woman and she doesn’t know how to play local politics and when she does have a bit of success, she doesn’t really know what to do with it or how to leverage it, but she won’t quit, she is always kind, and she is bold in a time when boldness was not “appropriate” for a woman, especially a widow. And for all of this, you admire her.

No one in her little village with the exception of Mr. Brundish seems to understand what a “necessary commodity” books are. And it seems like they despise Florence for modestly and quietly insisting that they are.

Personally, I think physical books are making a comeback, if indeed they were ever in any real danger. I believe there will always be people who love and want books. I know I am certainly one of them. Always have been and always will be.

But this novel does not romanticize, well, anything.

You aren’t going to read it and find page after page of self-indulgent prose on the glories of books and reading. Fitzgerald is not preaching a sermon, she’s telling a story. And it’s a good one.

You will find characters to like and ones to loathe and ones to pity. You’ll find yourself asking what you would have done if you were Florence.

Personally, I would given Mrs. Gamart a piece of mind in public, but it wouldn’t have done any good.

You will also find choice lines of prose like this one:

“She was held back by an urgent hand, and addressed by a man, not young, in a corduroy jacket, smiling as a toad does, because it has no other expression.”

Or this one…

“‘You’re very kind.’

‘Not very,’ said Milo, who rarely said anything that was not true. Gentleness is not kindness. His fluid personality tested and stole into the weak places of others until it found it could settle down to its own advantage.”

If you’re hoping for a happy ending, you won’t get one here. You will get an excellent story, that’s worth reading anyway. Fitzgerald writes about people as they are, not as we wish them to be.

In life, your undertakings, no matter how noble they may be, are not always going to find the support you want or need.

And sometimes, no matter how despicable someone’s actions might be, they will find plenty of support.

Either way, we shouldn’t quit. Or worse, fail to at least try. And we should never fail to be kind through it all.