Three Women Revitalize a 1950s Bookstore

 

Bloomsbury’s has been a bookstore for a hundred years. Unfortunately, many of it’s policies date from that era, but this is after the war. Women are working, people have money to spend, and the women who work at Bloomsbury’s worry that the store is not taking full advantage of the times.

The women set to change the staid bookstore are Vivien, Grace, and Evie. Vivien, the cashier, is single, her fiance having died in the war. She has a long list of grievances about the management of Bloomsbury’s and is itching to try her ideas. Grace, secretary to the manager, is married to a man suffering a breakdown after the war, so she is the main breadwinner in the family. While she loves her job she often feels overwhelmed by the stress of an ill husband, demanding children, and the men at work. Evie is a recent graduate of Cambridge, one of the first female students permitted to earn a degree.

Evie is the catalyst for change at Bloomsbury’s. Although she is brilliant, she was passed over for an academic job. With an excellent reference from Me. Yardley who holds a prominent position at Southby’s she gets a job at the bookstore. She hopes to work in the rare books section, but she has an ulterior motive that will change the lives of all three women and remake the bookstore.

I loved the book. Evie was also the main character in The Jane Austen Society. I was delighted to see her back. You can read this book as a standalone, but if you’ve never read the previous book, you may want to check it out.

Vivien and Grace are characters you can’t helping liking and hoping they’ll make a success of their ideas. The men are also well fleshed out. I didn’t care for Mr. Dutton, but he was emblematic of a type of manager who was being replaced by younger more forward thinking men and women. I loved the owner of the bookstore, Lord Baskin. He was gentle and interested in making changes for the new era.

I highly recommend this book. The characters are wonderful and the plot will keep you reading.

I received this book from St. Martin’s Press for this review.