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#BlogTour #BookReview The Bermondsey Bookshop by Mary Gibson @HoZ_Books

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Blog Tour Poster

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Bermondsey Bookshop by Mary Gibson, published yesterday in hardback and as an ebook by Head Of Zeus. Thanks to Vicky Joss for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy via NetGalley.

The Bermondsey BookshopAbout the Book

Set in 1920s London, this is the inspiring story of Kate Goss’s struggle against poverty, hunger and cruel family secrets.

Her mother died in a fall, her father has vanished without trace, and now her aunt and cousins treat her viciously. In a freezing, vermin-infested garret, factory girl Kate has only her own brave spirit and dreams of finding her father to keep her going. She has barely enough money to feed herself, or to pay the rent. The factory where she works begins to lay off people and it isn’t long before she has fallen into the hands of the violent local money-lender.

That is until an unexpected opportunity comes her way – a job cleaning a most unusual bookshop, where anyone, from factory workers to dockers, can learn to read and then buy books cheaply. A new world opens up, but with it come new dangers, too.

Based on the true story of the Bermondsey Bookshop, this is the most inspiring and gripping novel Mary Gibson has yet written.

Format: Hardcover, ebook (448 pages)      Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 6th February 2020         Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Bermondsey Bookshop on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

My Review

The story moves at a pace that allows plenty of opportunity for the author to provide detail about daily life for working class families in 1920s Bermondsey. The contrast between their experience – poor and overcrowded housing, ill health, insecure work – and that of the wealthier and more privileged is vividly depicted. In a neat inversion, it is Kate who lives in a garret and Martin, the artist for whom she models, who lives in a swanky flat.

I might have wished for a little more of the story to be focused on the Bermondsey Bookshop itself (which actually existed, founded in 1921 by Ethel Gutman, who also appears in the book). Instead its main role is to act as a location for Kate to meet other characters that she might not otherwise have encountered. For example, wealthy French teacher, Nora, or Martin, the aforementioned artist.

In Kate, the author has created an incredibly engaging main character – spirited, independent-minded, intelligent, and resilient. She certainly needs to be all those things because the author gives her plenty of trials and tribulations to face including homelessness, unemployment, debt, intimidation and cruelty from people who should treat her better. Happiness is indeed precarious. Through it all, you can’t help rooting for Kate – or forgiving her the odd purloined sticky bun or fisticuffs with her cousin Stan.

Initially, I couldn’t warm to Kate’s childhood sweetheart, Johnny, despite his own unhappy situation, but later I was forced to reappraise my view.  I also thought Kate’s idealised picture of the father who’d abandoned her as a child, although evidence of her generous nature, showed more than a little naivety. I wasn’t completely surprised by how things turned out.

As Kate learns, it’s not merely distance that separates Bermondsey and Belgravia, money doesn’t necessarily buy you happiness, ‘wealth is not the same as worth’, and dreams are sometimes just that. ‘She’d learned the folly of pinning her hopes on someone else to give her a better life, but she’d also learned her own power.’

The Bermondsey Bookshop has all the ingredients readers look for in this brand of historical fiction: a well-crafted story with great period atmosphere; moments of melodrama; a varied cast of characters, some likeable, others definitely not; and an inspiring message of the possibility of triumph over adversity.  Cinderella meets My Fair Lady, if you like.

For more information about the setting of the book (and biscuits) you can read my Q&A with Mary as part of the blog tour to celebrate publication of her previous book, Hattie’s Home.

In three words: Heart-warming, dramatic, emotional

Try something similar: A Ration Book Christmas by Jean Fullerton

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Mary GibsonAbout the Author

Mary Gibson was born and brought up in Bermondsey, south east London. After a thirty year career in publishing, she took the opportunity of early retirement to write a book of her own. Her début novel, Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts, was inspired by the lives and times of her grandparents in World War One Bermondsey. It went on to become a top ten Kindle best seller and was selected for World Book Night 2015.

Connect with Mary
Website | Twitter | Facebook

#WWWWednesday – 5th February 2020

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

An audiobook (at a slow rate, though no fault of the book) a book for a blog tour and a book from my TBR pile.

Heaven My HomeHeaven, My Home (Highway 59 #2) by Attica Locke (audiobook)

Nine-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he’s alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him – and all goes dark.

Darren Matthews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of re-building, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who’s never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she’s not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage.

An unlikely possibility of rescue arrives in the form of a case down Highway 59, in a small lakeside town where the local economy thrives on nostalgia for ante-bellum Texas – and some of the era’s racial attitudes still thrive as well. Levi’s disappearance has links to Darren’s last case, and to a wealthy businesswoman, the boy’s grandmother, who seems more concerned about the fate of her business than that of her grandson.

Darren has to battle centuries-old suspicions and prejudices, as well as threats that have been reignited in the current political climate, as he races to find the boy, and to save himself.

The Bermondsey BookshopThe Bermondsey Bookshop by Mary Gibson (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus and NetGalley)

Set in 1920s London, this is the inspiring story of Kate Goss’s struggle against poverty, hunger and cruel family secrets.

Her mother died in a fall, her father has vanished without trace, and now her aunt and cousins treat her viciously. In a freezing, vermin-infested garret, factory girl Kate has only her own brave spirit and dreams of finding her father to keep her going. She has barely enough money to feed herself, or to pay the rent. The factory where she works begins to lay off people and it isn’t long before she has fallen into the hands of the violent local money-lender. That is until an unexpected opportunity comes her way – a job cleaning a most unusual bookshop, where anyone, from factory workers to dockers, can learn to read and then buy books cheaply. A new world opens up, but with it come new dangers, too.

Based on the true story of the Bermondsey Bookshop, this is the most inspiring and gripping novel Mary Gibson has yet written.

SummerlandSummerland by Lucy Adlington (paperback, courtesy of Hot Key Books and Readers First)

Brigid is one of a group of child refugees being escorted to England by the Red Cross in October 1946. She is a serious, silent figure, with worn clothes and shoes and a small cardboard suitcase containing all her belongings. On arrival at Waterloo station however, Brigid breaks from the group and runs…

Brigid has a secret which she has buried deep inside her. She also has an ulterior motive: she needs to find a place called Summerland Hall where she hopes she will find the one person left alive who is deeply important to her.

An extraordinary tale, with some events inspired by history, that encompasses truth, tolerance, racism and forgiveness.

Recently finished

TBR#7KatherineKatherine by Anya Seton (ebook)

This classic romance novel tells the true story of the love affair that changed history – that of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the ancestors of most of the British royal family.

Set in the vibrant 14th century of Chaucer and the Black Death, the story features knights fighting in battle, serfs struggling in poverty, and the magnificent Plantagenets – Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II – who ruled despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, John of Gaunt, the king’s son, falls passionately in love with the already married Katherine. Their well-documented affair and love persist through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption.

This epic novel of conflict, cruelty, and untameable love has become a classic since its first publication in 1954.

Requiem for a KnaveRequiem for a Knave by Laura Carlin (eARC, courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley)

After the death of his mother, young Alwin of Whittaker leaves the only home he has ever known to seek answers about his unknown father through a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.

On the journey, Alwin falls in with a band of violent and marauding soldiers and is witness to their terrible crimes. When Alwin later joins up with a group of pilgrims, he must hide his identity . . . but he is not the only one with secrets to keep. Rosamund, a young woman travelling the same path, has much to conceal too.

The journey to discovering who he really is will lead Alwin into great danger and great passion. These are dark times, and through them, Alwin must shine a light.

Will the revelations to come destroy everything that came before? (Review to follow)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

516zEuy13+L._SX324_BO1,204,203,200_Stasi Winter (Karin Müller #5) by David Young (paperback, courtesy of  Zaffre and Readers First)

IN 1978 EAST GERMANY, NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS.
The state’s power is absolute, history is re-written, and the ‘truth’ is whatever the Stasi say it is.

So when the murder of a woman is officially labelled an ‘accidental death’, Major Karin Müller of the People’s Police is faced with a dilemma.

To solve the crime, she must defy the official version of events. But defying the Stasi means putting her own life – and the lives of her young family – in danger.

As the worst winter in history holds Germany in its freeze, Müller must untangle a web of state secrets and make a choice: between the truth and a lie, justice and injustice, and, ultimately, life and death.