Penelope Fitzgerald

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 1979 A lovely new cover reissue of Penelope Fitzgerald's award-winning comic novel. Offshore is a dry, genuinely funny novel, set among the houseboat community who rise and fall with the tide of the Thames on Battersea Reach. Living between land and water, they feel as if they belong to neither... Maurice, a male prostitute, is the sympathetic friend to whom all the others turn. Nenna loves her husband but can't get him back; her children run wild on the muddy foreshore. She feels drawn to Richard, the ex-RNVR city man whose converted minesweeper dominates the Reach. Is he sexually attractive because he can fold maps the right way? With this and other questions waiting to be answered, Offshore offers a delightful glimpse of the workings of an eccentric community.

Offshore

Gabe Cortez

Liam Byrne 

Several years ago, a friend of mine bought a boat to live on. Always someone who was happy to get along outside the more conventional tropes of life at the best of times, it wasn’t the most surprising thing he could have told us. He fit…well, whatever you might expect someone who owned a boat to be like. It is this that Penelope Fitzgerald primarily seeks to find out in ‘Offshore’, a story about a collection of people who live on the Battersea Reach section of the Thames. Whether wedded to the water, or lost and in a state of flux, it is the relationships that spring up around a group of outsiders who exist in the very heart of the capital that creates such a captivating story.

It is the cast of characters that Fitzgerald so deftly creates that carries the narrative along apace. Seen primarily through the eyes of Nenna, a woman whose marriage is on the rocks over her choice to buy a houseboat during her husband’s absence, her confused state of mind over her relationship, her strange yet uplifting friendships with others on the river, and her two relatively carefree daughters add together to create a tangled web of emotions and desires. Nenna feels somewhat like the boats on the Thames that are written about so evocatively: at the whim of the tide that at once keeps her afloat whilst at the same time an encroaching danger.

The narrative itself is simplistic, yet every description and piece of information about a character, major or minor, helps to build a world that feels fully lived in. No better is this seen during the time spent by Nenna’s daughters searching for treasures on the banks, before attempting to sell their wares in one of the antique shops nearby. The interactions between a couple of strong headed girls and the wary shopkeepers brim with life, as the two cultures clash in a battle of wits over the question of value.

There is a sadness about Nenna that is hard to deny as she initially voices the concerns over her marriage as being the one reason she doesn’t want to visit her husband; if she doesn’t see him, it can’t end. Whilst somewhat true if logically a bit of a stretch, her eventual decision to see Edward does create one of the more humorous set pieces of the novel as Nenna’s expectations of a romantic reuniting of the couple fall several feet short of what she gets. The hint of romance between herself and Richard at least offers some sense of a happy ending for her, though even that is not for certain.

To some, the openness of the ending may be somewhat off-putting, as well as the relatively thrift of the tale itself. However, it works for me as a slice of a lifestyle that is alien to many, giving us a chance to sample the whys and wherefores of a choice that is outside of the realms of convention for whole swathes of society. We meet, we briefly explore, we disappear. It is almost Coen Brothers-esque in that it gives us a notion of what is occurring at a very specific place and time, yet not necessarily giving us the beginning or the end. From that, you are allowed to make your mind up as to what has happened and that is part of the charm.

Melody Izard

I wanted to like this book. But I guess I just have to admit I don't get British humor. If I could give a half a star I'd do 2 and a half - but that's as far as I could go. The story is intriguing. It's about these people who live on barges on the River Thames. They have their little neighborhood association where they discuss whose boat is leaking and whose boat is for sale. Nenna's little girls are enjoyable. There are some funny things - but I usually love Booker award books and I was just not carried away with this one.

This Booker Prize-winning novel from the author of ‘The Blue Flower’ is set among the houseboat community of the Thames.

Steve Parks

'Offshore' is a dry, genuinely funny novel, set among the houseboat community who rise and fall with the tide of the Thames on Battersea Reach. Living between land and water, they feel as if they belong to neither...Maurice, a male prostitute, is the sympathetic friend to whom all the others turn. Nenna loves her husband but can't get him back; her children run wild on the muddy foreshore. She feels drawn to Richard, the ex-RNVR city man whose converted minesweeper dominates the Reach. Is he sexually attractive because he can fold maps the right way? With this and other questions waiting to be answered, 'Offshore' offers a delightful glimpse of the workings of an eccentric community.

Ed Kay

Offers a portrait of a group of eccentrics living in houseboats on the river Thames and describes how their disparate lives intertwine and complicate matters for everyone.

Clare B

Riah Forbes 

Winner of the Booker Prize On the Battersea Reach of the Thames, a mixed bag of the slightly disreputable, the temporarily lost, and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the great river’s tides. Belonging to neither land nor sea, they cling to one another in a motley yet kindly society. There is Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, by happenstance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard, a buttoned-up ex-navy man whose boat dominates the Reach. Then there is Nenna, a faithful but abandoned wife, the diffident mother of two young girls running wild on the waterfront streets. It is Nenna’s domestic predicament that, as it deepens, draws the relations among this scrubby community together into ever more complex and comic patterns. The result is one of Fitzgerald’s greatest triumphs, a novel the Booker judges deemed “flawless.” “A marvelous achievement: strong, supple, humane, ripe, generous, and graceful.” —Sunday Times

A Novel

Moray Lyle McIntosh

Offers a portrait of a group of eccentrics living in houseboats on the river Thames and describes how their disparate lives intertwine and complicate matters for everyone

Offshore

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