Emily Mortimer plays the quietly heroic shop owner at the heart of this fascinating Penelope Fitzgerald adaptation; It is a strange, subdued, rather miserable film, interestingly perceptive on conformism and philistinism as a way of life
a film that’s striking, albeit not quite unputdownable; It's memorable for its subtle unconventionality - sad without being a weepy, touching without being a romance
"The Bookshop" benefits from being made by an outsider. At times, it may seem off-key but there is an irony and originality here that you wouldn’t find if a British director had been calling the shots
