Will-power is useless without a sense of direction. She blinded herself, in short, by pretending for a while that human beings are not divided into exterminators and exterminates, with the former, at any given moment, predominating. Notwithstanding her innocuous kindness, in her optimist denial and determination, Florence refuses to give in to the lady’s wishes, and gossip, class and money issues, political and legal machinations and a poltergeist will sweep the small community in the battle of local loyalties, independency of spirit and authority. By purchasing the dilapidated, clammy ‘Old House’ for her bookshop, she almost parenthetically thwarts the plans of the local ‘first lady’ and patroness of all public activities in the town, Violet Gamart, who actually envisages the Old House not as a bookshop but as an art and music centre, worthy of competing with mighty Aldeburgh. When she decides to open a bookshop in the dozy coastal Suffolk town of Hardborough (Southwold), she will have to find out that a kind heart is not of much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation. Life is no bed of roses for the middle-aged widow Florence Green. She did not know that morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.Īs gentleness is not (necessarily) kindness, courage, hard work and virtue is not invariably rewarded, I learned as a child listening to George Brassens’s song about the poor brave little white horse that never saw spring.

The paris bookshop novel