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Based on Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel of the same name; ‘The Bookshop’ is set
in 1959, Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), a free spirited widow, puts grief
behind her and risks everything to open up a bookshop – the first such shop in
the sleepy seaside town of Hardborough, England. Fighting damp, cold and
considerable local apathy she struggles to establish herself but soon her
fortunes change for the better. By exposing the narrow minded local townsfolk
to the best literature of the day including Nabokov’s scandalising “Lolita” and
Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”, she opens their eyes thereby causing a
cultural awakening in a town which has not changed for centuries.
Her activities bring her a kindred spirit and ally in the figure of Mr Brundish (Bill
Nighy) who is himself sick of the town’s stale atmosphere. But this mini social
revolution soon brings her fierce enemies: she invites the hostility of the town’s
less prosperous shopkeepers and also crosses Mrs. Gamart (Patricia Clarkson), Hardborough’s vengeful,
embittered alpha female who is herself a wannabe doyenne of the local arts scene. When Florence
refuses to bend to Gamart’s will, they begin a struggle not just for the bookshop but for the very heart
and soul of the town.