I read The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald on my dark commute home in October, as part of my quest to read short novels that aren’t too heavy to carry around (preferring physical books to digital ones).

It is an unusual story in this day and age, in that it has an unhappy ending and is a crisp look at good people having the odds stacked against them, told in a very economical and matter-of-fact way.

Protagonist Florence Green decides to open a bookshop in her middle age, in the late 1950s seaside town of Hardborough, but quickly finds herself on the wrong side of powerful people in the town. Initial success at attracting customers ebbs away as her plan to stay put despite local opposition is thwarted, when the town busybody Mrs Gamart, used to getting her own way, gets her well connected nephew to pass a bill in Parliament enabling local authorities to evict going concern businesses to make way for arts centres.

So the end for the bookshop comes, without promised compensation, leaving Florence retreating to London with her tail between her legs and her prospects looking bleak. This is not however, as bleak as it sounds. It is a sharp, well-written tale of small mindedness and I was left feeling that Hardborough didn’t deserve Florence and that she would live to see another day.