The Bookshop cover art

The Bookshop

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Bookshop

By: Penelope Fitzgerald, Stephanie Racine, David Nicholls - introduction
Narrated by: Eve Karpf, David Nicholls
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £8.99

Buy Now for £8.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop.

Hardborough becomes a battleground. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

©1978 Penelope Fitzgerald; Introduction David Nicholls 2013; Preface Hermione Lee 2013 (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers Limited Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Movie, TV & Video Game Tie-Ins Small Town & Rural Women's Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Blue Flower cover art
The Friendly Air cover art
The Coward cover art
All Good Things cover art
Lord Jim cover art
The Frenchman and the Lady cover art
Good Behaviour cover art
The Women of Chateau Lafayette cover art
Wuthering Heights cover art
Enemy Women cover art
The Complete Short Stories cover art
What the Wind Knows cover art
The Unsettled Dust cover art
The Venice Sketchbook cover art
Where the Lost Wander cover art

Critic reviews

‘Reading a Penelope Fitzgerald novel is like being taken for a ride in a peculiar kind of car. Everything is of top quality – the engine, the coachwork and the interior all fill you with confidence. Then, after a mile or so, someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window.’ Sebastian Faulks

‘Wise and ironic, funny and humane, Fitzgerald is a wonderful, wonderful writer.’ David Nicholls

‘Its stylishness, and this low-voiced lack of emphasis are a pleasure throughout, its moral and human positions invariably sympathetic. But it is astringent too: no self-pity in its self-effacing heroine, who in a world of let-downs and put-downs and poltergeists, keeps her spirit bright and her book-stock miraculously dry in the damp, seeping East Anglian landscape.’ Isabel Quigley, Financial Times

‘Penelope Fitzgerald’s resources of odd people are impressively rich. Raven, the marshman, who ropes Florence in to hang on to an old horse’s tongue while he files the teeth; old Brundish, secretive as a badger, slow as a gorse bush. And this is not just a gallery of quirky still lives; these people appear in vignettes, wryly, even comically animated…On any reckoning, a marvellously piercing fiction.’ Valentine Cunningham, TLS
All stars
Most relevant  
An easy read/listen, quite relaxing, not too heavy if you want some light fiction. Cosy would sum this book up.

A nice short read,/listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

What made the experience of listening to The Bookshop the most enjoyable?

This was a lovely little book. I especially enjoyed the narration this time.

What did you like best about this story?

It had a bitter sweet theme.

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

Three different narrators and all very good.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Quite sad really with the odd chuckle.

Short but sweet

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The story and plot are a framework to illustrate village characters. Interesting and a little sad as a portrait of village life but surely still familiar today.

A study of personalities

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Thoroughly enjoyable, listened all in one go. I would recommend not listening to the forward beforehand. Felt a bit like a book of a film rather than the other way around but, I'd like to watch the film now.

Mixed feelings

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I loved this book. It is short and leaves you thinking about what happens next. It is beautifully written with exquisite language and character. This audiobook performance is understated and bring the story to life.

Elegant read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have been planning to read the Bookshop for some time but have simply never got around to it. I am so glad it is perfect audio book slow, gentle, funny and heartbrealking in a very short spaceof time. it si a very English book both in charachter and pace and I so loved it. The narration fits perfectly. Perhaps my favourite Audible so far.

Pretty much perfect

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I am new to Penelope Fitzgerald 's work. But now am a devoted fan. Great story,real characters. Loved it. Beautifully read. Sorry it's over.

Spellbinding

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
When, in 1959. recently widowed Florence Green finally opens the Old House as a book shop in the small coastal town of Hardborough, she knew already she would be battling against sea water leakage, damp and even possible ghost intrusion. But she hadn't expected to also have to face the quietly unrelenting hostility of townsfolk who believed themselves important.
Remarkably lifelike characters and the behind scene machinations of those who believe themselves important make this delightful novel thought provoking as well as sketching the picture of this mid 20th century village will skill and gentleness. All beautifully delivered by narrator, Eve Karpf.

Highly recommended, but please, skip the intro by David Nicholls until after reading

Surely a bookshop would be an asset to any town?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was surprised and pleased to listen to this superb story from Penelope Fitzgerald, great.

unexpected pleasure

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Bottom lip story of a book shop seller and and it’s ephemeral mishaps with grim toady people

Book Mark

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews