Bloomsbury Girls
A sleepy bookstore gets turned upside-down in this cracking follow-up to The Jane Austen Society.
When the general manager of Bloomsbury Books goes on extended leave in early 1950, longtime employee Vivien Lowry jumps at the chance to take over as Head of Fiction. Having been passed over for promotion multiple times in favor of less-qualified men, she’s eager to showcase books by women. Meanwhile, secretary Grace Perkins is struggling with the decision to leave her abusive husband. She knows she should, but she worries about the stigma of being a divorced woman. Then there’s recent Cambridge graduate Evie Stone. One of the first women to earn a Cambridge degree, she lost out on a prestigious assistantship at the university to a male candidate who’d taken credit for some of her work. While the cat’s away, these women band together to transform Bloomsbury Books into the modern bookshop they know it can be. But when the general manager comes back early and returns the women to positions with no power, they realize they’ll have to fight harder to beat the status quo. Fortunately, Evie knows of a valuable rare book hidden somewhere in the crowded stacks of Bloomsbury Books that could change everything.
Jenner sparkles in this deliciously feminist yet never anachronistic sophomore offering. Each character is distinct and fully realized, and even the grumpiest ones have their charm. The author fully immerses the reader in a post-war London that is full of hope and promise but still recovering from the war. With cameos by Daphne Du Maurier and Peggy Guggenheim, Bloomsbury Girls shows that “ambition” is not a dirty word for women and that everyone should fight for what they deserve. While clearly a companion to Jenner’s first novel, Bloomsbury Girls can be enjoyed as a standalone. Highly recommended.
