[In The Bookshop] Penelope Fitzgerald paints the bleak East Anglian coast in a verbal equivalent of the watercolours which a local artist tries to persuade Florence to exhibit in her shop. Against this background she draws some splendidly English eccentrics of all ages, from 11-year-old Christine, who helps in the shop after school, to the oldest inhabitant, Mr Brundish, who dies in the attempt to defend Florence's rights. There is also a poltergeist or 'rapper', but its antics do not much influence events…. The author has a wry humour and an easy, economical style, but the book peters out rather disappointingly; it is not unlike its protagonist, 'small, wispy and wiry'. (p. 690)

John Mellors, "War Wounds" (© British Broadcasting Corp. 1978; reprinted by permission of John Mellors), in The Listener, Vol. 100, No. 2587, November 23, 1978, pp. 689-90.∗