Offshore

Product Information

Her admirers are drawn to Fitzgerald's sparseness of expression and her ability to trace the subtle social interactions between disparate characters, who often work or live together in small, offbeat communities. The one whose life we learn the most about is Willis, a retired marine painter who is trying to sell his unseaworthy boat Dreadnought.

Page after page, this is a miraculous book, miraculous in its genial understanding of character, doubly miraculous in its powers of description. It was inspired by the most difficult years of Fitzgerald's own life, years during which she lived on an old Thames sailing barge moored at Battersea Reach. They're held together, for as long as they can be, by Richard, a fussy and relatively competent old Navy guy who imagines that all of this can be fixed. On seeing Fitzgerald being ‘down in the dumps’, he took her out for a day of fun and frivolity; only a few days later, he walked into the sea and drowned himself.

To decide or not, for ”when you decide, you multiply the things you might have done and now never can. Tilda is perhaps the least convincing character, which is a shame, as it could be fixed by making her 10, rather than 6.

I can think of a few Goodreads friends who would like it for that reason, too, though these same friends are apt to like it for more than just that.

Yes, there is,’ Martha replied, with a firmness which she could hardly have inherited either from her father or her mother, ‘but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go and look at things. Some of the people appear rather normal to high functioning in this 1960s world (Richard) while others appear to be near drowning as they try to find a way to survive (Nenna, Maurice, Willis) while Nenna's daughters Tilda and Martha are caught somewhere in between.

I don't relate to the specific circumstances, and it’s set before I was born, but the paralysis of indecision, when torn between two thoughts or situations is something I often struggle with. The book's surprise win was greeted with a reaction that Fitzgerald's publisher described as "so unpleasant a demonstration of naked spite". The next day Richard is attacked by Harry and so badly injured he needs emergency surgery to save his life. She is the most boat-bound of the characters; although a trained musician,she now has no job, spends her days on board, and becomes almost disoriented when she has to go beyond the adjacent streets.As I read Offshore, and stumbled over the baggage of Penelope Fitzgerald's crew of barge-dwelling characters, I was thrown off-balance many times. The reader is left to imagine a consequence in which each of these lives moves forward into a new phase, perhaps happy, perhaps less so. It’s a fairly sparse novel populated by a group of fairly run down eccentrics and despite its brevity moves at a gentle pace.

Lots Road Power Station was decommissioned in 2002 and is now the centrepiece of a 'buzzing new urban lifestyle destination'.When Nenna finally reaches the house no-one answers the bell, but she is eventually let in by a man who turns up and who she learns is Gordon, a friend of Edward whom she had apparently met but has forgotten. The crucial moment when children realise that their parents are younger than they are had long since been passed by Martha. I was totally drawn into the atmosphere of the book, and the characters will stay with me for a long time.