Reviews - Bloomsbury Girls

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627 reviews for:

Bloomsbury Girls

Natalie Jenner

3.8 AVERAGE

iris_in_bloom's review against another edition

3.0

hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Loveable characters: Yes

lamom77's review

4.0

Another beautifully written historical fiction book about books from Natalie Jenner. Loved the characters and the setting. Fun to have so many "star authors" make appearances.

heispa's review against another edition

3.25

hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

rebroxannape's review against another edition

4.0

Vivien had lost count of the number of times young female students and staff from the surrounding universities and museums had come into the shop asking for certain women authors, only to be met with an unexpected lack of success. Only Agatha Christie, Nancy Mitford, and Daphne du Maurier could reliably be found on the shelves, mostly because they continued to produce and sell and were therefore harder to ignore.

Bloomsbury Girls was a very pleasant read with a great ending but I didn’t like it as much as The Jane Austen Society. I think that maybe the small village bucolic setting gave me a Deja Vue nostalgia that called up so many gentle English countryside novels and cozy mysteries that I have read over the years. The very insularity appealed to me for whatever reason. Of course, the ties to Jane Austen and the shades of her novels in the characters and their relationships were also a plus.

This one is set in bustling post-war London. This is probably an advantage over JAS for most readers, and I was looking forward to the change of scene as well. It centers around 3 underestimated women working in a new, used, and collectible bookstore run by men. At Bloomsbury Books Daphne DuMaurier is referred to as "that romance writer." Beautiful Vivien, whose fiance was killed in WWII is smarter, more talented, and more business-minded than all of the men in higher positions, but since she is a woman, she doesn’t get the opportunity to enact her progressive ideas. Until she does. Grace is Vivien’s friend and the secretary to the "shaky but iron-fisted" manager of the bookstore with his 51 inflexible rules. She sympathizes with Vivien, but she is a peacekeeper, not a rabble-rouser. She is trapped in a bad and emotionally abusive marriage, with seemingly no way out. And last but not least, we have Evie Stone, a favorite character from The Jane Austen Society. Evie is one of the first woman graduates of Cambridge but has been denied a career in academia because of sexism and the political “old boy system”. She takes a job organizing and cataloging the rare books section of Bloomsbury books. But she has an ulterior motive. Thanks to her brilliant work with Jane Austen’s family library, she knows there is a book there somewhere that she has to find. Her ultimate dream is to see that long-forgotten and neglected works by women authors of the past are brought to light and properly recognized.

Evie often found herself frustrated by the discrepancy between the archival preservation of male writing and that of their female counterparts—how every sketch of a twig that [famed 18thc. Botanist] John Loudon had ever even whimsically composed was being carefully safeguarded by several British museums, while an entire novel by his wife had become only a minor footnote in the record of her husband’s work.

Real Life historical figures in the book world of the day all play a part in how the women achieve their dreams, with an assist from another important (fictional) character from The Jane Austen Society. And it is pretty spectacular how the three women escape from the bonds of tradition, sexism, and stagnation. It's pretty clear that Natalie Jenner was inspired by real-life events and women who moved the needle of female empowerment forward. Towards the end, the series of events which by cause and surprising effect upend the bookstore, the opportunities for our heroines, and the academic establishment itself is tightly woven and immensely satisfying. But getting to that end was at times a bit too slow-moving and meandering, which the fast-paced and well-constructed last quarter of the book only highlighted.

Of course, I rarely read a book that doesn’t have at least a little romance. And 2 of the three stories were charming in that regard. The third started out very promisingly but was stymied by the irritating character traits and bad behavior of the couple. Although I wasn’t bowled over by the book as a whole, many aspects kept my interest going, and the way it all ended made up for most of the more frustrating aspects.**3 1/2 stars**

https://rebekahsreadingsandwatchings.com/

thebrunettebookjunkie's review against another edition

3.0

informative inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

frompemberleytomiltonblog's review

4.0

Review Published at:
https://frompemberleytomilton.wordpress.com/2022/05/19/bloomsbury-girls-by-natalie-jenner/

Bloomsbury Books transports the reader to 1950 and shows him what life in London was like for a myriad of characters with different backgrounds, different nationalities, and different expectations towards life. It brings back Evie Stone, a sweet girl introduced in Natalie Jenner’s debut book, The Jane Austen Society, but it also presents us with other characters who work at the bookshop in Lamb’s Conduit Street, namely Vivien Lowry and Grace Perkins around whom the main story will be centered.

As we are introduced to the bookshops many rules, the narrative connects those rules to the stories of the various employees who share a love for literature despite their many differences. This was one of the aspects I enjoyed the most about this book. I mean, what’s not to love in a book about books and literature? The setting was perfect! I loved to witness the events that were organized at the bookshop, follow the participants discussions, and to have well known authors like Daphne du Maurier, Samuel Beckett and George Orwell present in the story in one way or the other.

I found the diversity of characters and especially the diversity of their lives, their position in society and expectations very interesting as it demonstrated that everybody is unique and has their own struggles to face, but I also found it difficult to connect with all these characters because the book was somewhat descriptive and we were introduced not only to many different characters, but also to many details about their lives, thoughts, feelings and even the people connected to them, which created a distance towards the characters, and was at times distracting to me.

Even though this is a women-centric novel, and Grace was the person who captivated me the most, there were a few male characters such as Alex or Lord Baskin that I truly enjoyed and would have liked to get to know better. They were essential to get the Bloomsbury Girls where they needed to be in, and I really liked their contribute to the tale.

As the story progressed, I started to get more interested to know if the Bloomsbury girls would indeed overcome their fears and achieve their goal. I liked the fact that these women found a way to support each other, and that their common goal was also liberating with regards to their own personal struggles. Each one of these characters had something they felt they needed to overcome to be happy with their life, so I enjoyed seeing that books were the answer to their desires.

Summing up, Bloomsbury Girls in an immersive novel that transports the reader to the post World War II London society where the reader will find stories of lost hope and disappointment, but also resilience, friendship, strength and success.