Being overlooked when it comes to job opportunities, simply because they are female is something that still resonates. Each with her own quirks, as well as passion and ambition in abundance. The story revolves around three strong female protagonists – Evie, Grace and Vivien. It can also be because I enjoyed this book so much! Having recently discovered my love for historical fiction, I was easily transported to 1950’s London – and more specifically, in a delightful and notable bookstore, and found the scene-setting and periodic reference effortless and easy to get into. Of course, there are hints and references that may have been a bit more logical if you read the first book, but I did not find this to be a deal-breaker at all! I didn’t realise that this book, “Bloomsbury Girls”, is the second in the series, but I found that it read quite easily as a stand-alone. Let me just note that I have not read “The Jane Austen Society”. Now she’s working at Bloomsbury Books while she plans to remake her own future.Īs they interact with various literary figures of the time – Daphne Du Maurier, Ellen Doubleday, Sonia Blair (widow of George Orwell), Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim, and others – these three women with their complex web of relationships, goals and dreams are all working to plot out a future that is richer and more rewarding than anything society will allow. Torn between duty to her family and dreams of her own.Įvie Stone: In the first class of female students from Cambridge permitted to earn a degree, Evie was denied an academic position in favour of her less accomplished male rival. Grace Perkins: Married with two sons, she’s been working to support the family following her husband’s breakdown in the aftermath of the war. Vivien Lowry: Single since her aristocratic fiancé was killed in action during World War II, the brilliant and stylish Vivien has a long list of grievances – most of them well justified and the biggest of which is Alec McDonough, the Head of Fiction. But in 1950, the world is changing, especially the world of books and publishing, and at Bloomsbury Books, the girls in the shop have plans:

The internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society returns with a compelling and heart-warming story of post-war London, a century-old bookstore, and three women determined to find their way in a fast-changing world.īloomsbury Books is an old-fashioned new and rare bookstore that has persisted and resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the general manager’s unbreakable fifty-one rules.

The jane austen society novel