The Bookshop, by Penelope Fitzgerald

After finishing Shrines of Gaiety, I briefly went back to Midnight in the Century (I suspect I'll continue to work my way through it slowly), but then I had a rather harrowing Tuesday morning. I woke up around 5am and was vaguely aware of a cat meowing continuously somewhere outside my window. I dozed for another hour or so, then got up, showered and came downstairs just before 7am. The meowing was still going, and seemed to get louder as I walked into my back room, which opens out to my backyard. I decided to investigate. The meows seemed to stop when I went outside, and I looked around my yard and what I could see of my neighbors', but didn't see a cat. Just as I was about to head back inside, I noticed a paw sticking out between two wooden fenceposts in my neighbor's yard. I realized the cat was trapped there, with one of its back legs stuck in the fence. On my side of the fence, there was a second chain link fence, topped with concertina wire. The cat must have tried to climb under the wire and over the fences and gotten its paw caught jumping down. I couldn't get a good look at her from my yard because, except for her paw, she was on the other side of the wood fence. I brought out a ladder and put on a coat, hat, and gloves for protection, and got a towel to try wrap the cat in. I had to lift the concertina wire and duck under (which is why I wore the hat) it to be able to grab her on the other side of the fence. She squirmed and hissed and put up quite a fight even in her state of immobility when I tried to close the towel around her, but I was able to get enough weight off her leg that I could twist it the right way and pull it up out from between the fence posts. I thought I might be able to pull her through to my side wrapped in the towel, but she bolted as soon as she was freed. From what I could tell in the brief moment I could see her running off, she seemed okay so hopefully her leg didn't sustain too much damage, but the whole experience left me quite shaken. I came back inside and had my coffee and breakfast and I decided I wanted a book I could curl up into for comfort and warmth. I looked at my shelves and thought The Bookshop might do the trick.

I'm not sure in retrospect if it was quite the book I was looking for – in fact, the end left me a little gutted – but for the hour or so that I read it on Tuesday morning, it was just the thing. A youngish widow in post war England decides to open a bookshop in an out of the way coastal town in East Anglia. There are forces in the town for her and against her, but things seem to come together for her – until they don't. This is only the second book of Penelope Fitzgerald's that I've read, but her simple, clear voice with beautiful attention to details is just how I remembered it. This was a lovely little book. 

Shrines of Gaiety, by Kate Atkinson

I've become such a slow reader. After finishing the Marías two weeks into January, I started Midnight in the Century by Victor Serge, who has stuck in my mind since I read Unforgiving Years in 2021. But like Unforgiving Years, it was slow going. I would find my mind wandering, so I only read little bits at a time. Last Friday, I settled in to read it and after a few pages decided it just wasn't what I was in the mood for. The weekend prior, I had gone to New Orleans where I found Kate Atkinson's Shrines of Gaiety in a Little Free Library. It was an exciting find, because I'm a fan of Kate Atkinson and yet I hadn't even known she had a new book out last year. It was sitting on my coffee table when I picked up – and put back down – Midnight in the Century. I thought it might be more my speed, and it was.

I enjoy Kate Atkinson both for her historical literary fiction and her Jackson Brodie detective novels. Shrines of Gaiety is sort of a blend of the two. It takes place in the nightclubs of interwar London. There has been a string of missing girls and unsolved murders, police corruption is suspected, and a detective is determined to clean things up. The novel follows a wide cast of characters in the London nightlife scene. I was reminded of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, which I read many years ago – though I've seen the film adaptation of it, Bright Young Things, much more recently. Specifically there's a gossip columnist in Shrines of Gaiety who reminded me of Simon Balcairn (played by James MacAvoy in the movie). Shrines of Gaiety takes a similarly dark view of the "bright young things," though they are peripheral figures in the story, which focuses more on the people behind the scenes – the nightclub owners, managers, dance hostesses, the dirty cops. Among the central characters are two resourceful young women (one a girl, really) and they give the book its heart. This was a fun read, and apparently just what I needed.