“Grace Bennett had always dreamed of someday living in London.”

From Drayton, Norfolk, where she had a somewhat horrible and unfulfilled life, living with relatives and working for her uncle, to the promise of an exciting big city life with her best friend, Viv. It is August 1939, and she has no idea of the war that is brewing. 

But this story is not your usual war story of fighting men in trenches fighting across Europe. Instead, the spotlight is on women who stay at home and support the war effort in many different ways. They live or die doing their jobs and much more as the German bombing raids hit London in wave after wave of bombers which are described in careful detail from the point of view of those on the receiving end of the bombs.

Grace and Viv, who have been friends since early school days, are going to stay with Mrs. Weatherford, and old friend of Grace’s mum. They arrive and are welcomed by Mrs. Weatherford and her young son Colin, to a comfortable life and the promise of jobs in London. Soon the war begins, Churchill tells the world on radio that the times will be tough, but they will survive by proving how strong they can be in times of adversity.

Viv works at a big department store until she joins a womens’ branch of the service to help the war effort. Grace, with the help of Mrs. Weatherford, lands a job at a run-down bookstore full of books and dirt. There she works with the owner, a man who has lost his wife and daughter and seems distant and difficult, but who has agreed to hire Grace for a six-month trial period. Grace takes on the job and starts to learn about books and begins to reorganize and clean the store.

Soon the bombs start falling, the two young friends are involved in war-time activity, and as the bombing raids increase we learn of the toughness of the British and the kindness they exhibit to each other during the war years.

The story unfolds showing how Grace copes with her work at the bookstore, how she becomes an avid reader, books are at the centre of the story, with Grace reading to people in the air raid shelters, reading book after book for her own enlightenment, and receiving books from her pilot friend. She learns to enjoy books, to reorganize the bookstore, to care for her fellow Londoners, and to fall in love. Above all she learns how to be a caring human being during this extremely tough time.

There are not many surprises as the story unfolds, but it is a sensitive look at WW2 from a different point of view. Even the bookstore is bombed, but the community effort to keep it alive and offering books is exceptional.

The Last Bookshop in London is an excellent book to read. Especially during these days of the covid pandemic, for it tells of human kindness and love.

Bob Lane is a Philosophy Professor Emeritus at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo. BC.

Categories: Fiction

Keywords: World War 2 fiction