The Bermondsey Bookshop by Mary Gibson
Genre: Historical fiction
Read: 20th May 2020
Purchase: Amazon
(publication date: 6th February 2020)
★★★★ 4.5 stars
A book about a bookstore. How could I resist? The smell of old books, new books, all books...and losing oneself to the stories within. Yet THE BERMONDSEY BOOKSHOP is not really about a bookshop at all but about one young woman's growth through the strength she finds within that bookshop...and the classes that bring them together.
Kate Goss was just six years old when her mother fell to her death from the garret stairs in which they lived. Her father, overwhelmed with grief, palmed her off to his sister Sylvie to look after until he had made enough money to reclaim her. But that day never came. Instead, Kate grew up with her aunt and her cousins who despised her and tormented her daily. She became their skivvy to cook and clean up after them when really she would rather have dumped their dinner in their laps. When her cousin Stan began to show an unhealthy interest in her, Kate was given the cold confines of the garret for her bedroom. But that didn't stop Stan trying to grope her at every chance.
When Kate turned 14, her Aunt Sylvie dragged her to the local tin factory, Boutle's, who were hiring girls. It was a dirty filthy job but Aunt Sylvie said it was time she "earned her keep" and of the seven shillings sixpence she earned, Sylvie allowed her to keep a shilling for herself...to buy her own clothes and soap, mind. Kate had no idea where the rest of her money went, for it wasn't on her keep. At Boutle's Kate makes a few friends but one particular kindly robust woman called Marge takes her under her wing. There is also Conny, a young girl who replaces Kate with the sweeping and cleaning when she started tinplate bashing.
Kate had been at Boutle's three years when she had an altercation with her cousins and aunt that there would be no turning back from. Her spiteful cousin Janey, three years her senior, made innuendos and untoward comments about Kate's deceased mum...and Kate saw red. She punched Janey square in the nose, breaking it, and did not let up punching her until Aunt Sylvie stabbed her with a knife, drawing it along her arm. The incident saw Sylvie throw Kate and her meagre possessions out with nowhere to go. She tried her Aunt Sarah down the row but she couldn't stay there. She even slept on the boats moored in the river until she was caught. Despite having nowhere to go, Kate vowed she would never return to Sylvie's. Then Aunt Sarah said she had found her a place...but it was ten shillings a week! Three more than she earned at Boutle's. But the room was none other than the garret in which she had lived with her mum and dad all those years ago...and she felt she had come home. Each night she would gaze out the little dormer window down to the Thames and dream of her father coming back to rescue her. That was when she began looking for extra work to take on. And when Marge came across a notice in a window for a cleaner, she was quick to tell Kate about it before the position was snatched up.
In her dinner break, Kate raced up to Bermondsey Street and looked for the brightly coloured building Marge had described to her...and found herself standing outside the Bermondsey Bookshop. A bookshop? In Bermondsey? She went in and met Ethel Gutman, the proprietor, stating that she was here for the job as cleaner. The hours were a little different, Ethel informed her but that didn't matter as it could be worked around her shifts at Boutle's and those as a barmaid down at the Hand and Marigold pub. Ethel said the pay wasn't much but to Kate it was more than she could have imagined and even better than that at Boutle's. And so she began her silent work as a cleaner for the bookshop. Little did she know, the faces that she was to meet within this little shop would change the course of her life forever.
Kate dreamed of a life with her father, one where he would return to reclaim her and they would live happily every after but her aunt Sylvie and cousin Stan tried putting paid to that by telling her he didn't want to see her. Besides, he was now living abroad making his fortune - why would he want to come to Bermondsey? But one morning, Kate catches a glimpse of a familiar figure in a flash car outside the bookshop. It can't be...can it?
Set in 1920s London, THE BERMONDSEY BOOKSHOP is a well-crafted story of period fiction, complete with melodrama and a diverse cast of characters - some likable, others definitely not. It features the real Bermondsey Bookshop that was founded by Ethel Gutman in 1921, who also features in this story, and although the book's focus is not the bookshop but rather Kate, it is an important fixture of Kate's story.
THE BERMONDSEY BOOKSHOP is such a heartwarming tale of Kate's strength and determination, her rise from the cockney girl of Bermondsey to the affluence of Belgravia. But Kate soon learns that it's far more than distance that separates Bermondsey and Belgravia and money doesn't necessarily buy you happiness.
My first read by Mary Gibson, I definitely recommend this wonderful historical tale that has an easy style with great flow.
I would like to thank #MaryGibson, #NetGalley and #HeadOfZeus for an ARC of #TheBermondseyBookshop in exchange for an honest review.
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