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| London - 1950 Evie Stone, one of the first female graduates of Cambridge, has just been turned down for a job as a research assistant for a Senior Fellow. Instead, a male graduate who Evie knows is less skilled than she, is chosen. This leaves Evie in need of a place to live, and an income. But the ever well-organized, single-minded Evie has a back-up plan. As one of the members of the Jane Austen Society, she categorized the books in the library of Chawton Great House. Austen had lived, at one point, in Chawton cottage. While doing so, she found one book written many years ago by a young woman that could prove to be worth a fortune. And Evie knows who bought that book at the auction of the library contents. Bloomsbury Books & Maps in London struggles to exist in the post World War Two era. Managed by two men, Herbert Dutton, and Frank Allen, owned by the man who inherited the building and land, Lord Baskin, and whose department heads are all males, Bloomsbury Books has yet to embrace the twentieth century. Grace Perkins is Dutton's secretary, and Vivien Lowry, a bright, under-used employee, works the front of the store. Dutton has fifty-one "unbreakable" rules that all in the store must follow. Grace and Vivien try hard to abide by them, but, Vivien especially, works even harder to circumvent those orders. Evie Stone's arrival at Bloomsbury Books, presenting a card from Frank Allen that he gave her at the auction, gives Grace and Vivien some interesting ideas. All three women have "friends in high places", it seems. Evie's membership in the Jane Austen Society has had her make close friends with a movie star, Mimi Harrison, and Yardley Sinclair, an auctioneer at Sotheby's. Lord Baskin has taken Grace under his wing (her husband has yet to recover from the war, leaving her the sole income earner), and Vivien, whose love of writing led her to the bookstore, as well as Fiction section manager, Alec, although that relationship continues to fizzle, has been introduced to a list of powerful women: Ellen Doubleday, widow of the American publisher, Sonia Blair, widow of George Orwell, and Peggy Guggenheim, American heiress, not mention getting the attention of playwright Samuel Beckett, and author Daphne du Maurier. When Dutton has a medical emergency and is side-lined, and with Allen off on one of his buying trips, Alec is left in charge of the store, leaving Vivien to run the fiction department on her own. Her innovative ideas soon begin to bring in more customers, including some of the above powerful women, thus giving Bloomsbury Books a boost in its finances, as well as boosting the morale of the women employees. Still, Evie hasn't revealed exactly why she chose this bookstore, or how she is going to get around the fifty-one rules to achieve her goal. Post-war Britain has yet to realize that women belong in the work force and, in fact, are a force to be reckoned with. Vivien, Grace, and Evie are determined to escape the prejudices that have kept them from achieving their own goals. Can these three bright, innovative women rise above those fifty-one rules oriented males? BLOOMSBURY GIRLS will have readers smiling, grimacing, teary-eyed, and applauding. By the author of THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY, BLOOMSBURY GIRLS is an uplifting, occasionally emotional, story that will have readers enthralled. Don't miss this terrific novel. Jani Brooks |
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BLOOMSBURY GIRLS - Natalie Jenner