The Last Bookshop in London: A Novel of World War II

The house that’s been destroyed was owned by an elderly couple named the Hews, who had always been kind and generous to their neighbors. The Hews survived: They made it to the neighborhood bomb shelter in time. The neighbors gather to work together to help the Hews sort through the rubble of their home.

Grace goes into work exhausted from her night on duty. Mr. Evans encourages her to resign from the ARP. That night, more bomb raids hit London. The Nazis destroy a hospital and a school.

Grace goes to work and is disturbed to find Mr. Evans passed out drunk. He tells her that he had a daughter who died in the same car accident as his wife. Had Alice lived, she would have been Grace’s age. Grace even looks like his daughter. He admits that he can’t bear to lose Grace, too.

Bomb raids become the norm in London and Grace’s shifts as an ARP warden are extended to five nights a week. One day, as she’s working in the bookstore, an air raid alarm goes off. She brings her book, Middlemarch by George Eliot, into the tube station bomb shelter. A woman next to her asks about the book, and Grace tells her the story as the sounds of war outside grow louder. The people around her ask her to read aloud from the book, and Grace helps comfort people during a bombing by reading the book out loud.

The next day, Grace finds herself in the same tube station bomb shelter during an air raid, reading aloud from Middlemarch.

In September, the weather turns rainy, and the bomb raids become less incessant. One day, a man named Jack comes into the store to thank Grace for saving his life. He explains that he’s a construction worker who took jobs closer to Grace’s tube station so he could hear her read from her novel, which saved him from being in the vicinity of the bombs. He asks her to read aloud from the novel again, and gestures to a group of people waiting outside the store: all the people who had crowded around her in the tube to hear the novel. Grace starts holding readings at Primrose Hill Books.

When yet another air raid sends Mrs. Weatherford and Grace to their backyard bomb shelter, they find the shelter flooded and have to rush to the nearest neighborhood bomb shelter. Mrs. Weatherford refuses to leave her home and reveals that when Grace isn’t home with her, Mrs. Weatherford never uses the bomb shelter. She tearfully confesses she wants to join Colin.

The war has become so escalated that most people are released from work at four o’ clock in the afternoon so they can rest before going on duty, as most people now have their regular employment and the war effort organizations that they work for. People start lining up at bomb shelters before an air raid even begins, certain that a bombing will occur.

One night, while on duty, Grace finds herself in the direct line of a falling bomb. Mr. Stokes forces her behind a pile of sandbags just in time to avoid the worst of the blast. They try to shake off their state of shock and find many deceased neighbors. When she returns home after her shift, she puts on the identification bracelet Viv had bought her, knowing now how easy it would have been for her to die that night.

The next day at work, Mr. Evans comforts Grace while she cries. He understands her pain and knows from his life in the Great War that that pain never goes away, but that there’s still much to hope for. The air raids and bombings become worse. On duty, Mr. Stokes has stopped talking about gore as a way of gossiping. He thanks Grace for keeping him calm when they found neighbors dead, and she jokes that it must be because she’s a woman, reminding Mr. Stokes that he had underestimated her. They begin a friendship that helps them work better together as more bombs destroy their neighborhood.

One night, while on duty, she’s informed that a bomb has been dropped on Mrs. Weatherford’s house. Grace rushes to Mrs. Weatherford and finds her alive and the house intact. The bomb has landed on their backyard bomb shelter, but it hasn’t detonated. They call in a bomb squad to help safely disassemble the bomb. Mrs. Weatherford talks like she doesn’t care about the bomb. Grace begs her to be more careful because she can’t bear to lose her, and Mrs. Weatherford realizes how much she’s still needed alive. Mrs. Weatherford starts spending her nights in the neighborhood bomb shelter. By October, hundreds of people have been killed in the bombings, and thousands are unhoused. To keep news of the destruction hidden from Germany, Churchill’s policies ensure that death tolls and identifications of destroyed businesses are not published.

On a nice day, Grace visits Paternoster Row, where the shops are still busy. She visits Mr. Pritchard’s bookstore and offers him advice about how to make his store more successful.

Grace continues hosting readings at Primrose Hill Books. She notices a boy, too old to have been evacuated from the city, dressed in rags and sheepishly tucked away in a corner during the readings. She brings the boy up to Mrs. Weatherford, suggesting that he needs help.

The bombings on London become commonplace, but Grace doesn’t get used to the death and destruction she tends to. Mrs. Weatherford uses her precious reserve of flour to bake the mysterious boy a loaf of bread, which she gives to him at one of Grace’s readings.

Grace receives letters from Viv and George, both informing her that they will be returning to London for the Christmas holiday.

Mrs. Weatherford ingratiates herself with the boy at Grace’s readings. She introduces him to Grace as Jimmy. Jimmy reveals that his parents are both dead, presumably in a bombing. Now he and his little sister Sarah are left on their own. Mrs. Weatherford invites them to her house for Christmas. She also invites Mr. Evans.

As Mrs. Weatherford prepares the house for a meager but special Christmas celebration, Viv returns. Viv and Grace catch up on what’s been going on, and Viv tells Grace that the silver lining of her work is that there are often dances where she socialized with other women and men. Viv convinces Grace to go out to the West End with her. Despite the bombings, people have still tried to keep up their social life, even if it means bringing an extra pair of clothes to camp out in a tube station bomb shelter after a night of dancing. They have a wonderful time drinking, laughing, and dancing in the West End, as though they are two normal young women and the world around them is without war. When they leave the bar, however, they discover that a bomb dropped without them even hearing the raid over the sound of the music.

Grace met many men while dancing, but she’s excited to see George again, who has scheduled a date with her later that afternoon. Viv helps her get ready for her date. Grace is thrilled to see him knock on her door.