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Offshore

3.6 of 5 stars 3.60 · rating details · 1,101 ratings · 134 reviews

Offshore possesses perfect, very odd pitch. In just over 130 pages of the wittiest and most melancholy prose, Penelope Fitzgerald limns the lives of "creatures neither of firm land nor water"--a group of barge-dwellers in London's Battersea Reach, circa 1961. One man, a marine artist whose commissions have dropped off since the war, is attempting to sell his decrepit craft...more Offshore possesses perfect, very odd pitch. In just over 130 pages of the wittiest and most melancholy prose, Penelope Fitzgerald limns the lives of "creatures neither of firm land nor water"--a group of barge-dwellers in London's Battersea Reach, circa 1961. One man, a marine artist whose commissions have dropped off since the war, is attempting to sell his decrepit craft before it sinks. Another, a dutiful businessman with a bored, mutinous wife, knows he should be landlocked but remains drawn to the muddy Thames. A third, Maurice, a male prostitute, doesn't even protest when a criminal acquaintance begins to use his barge as a depot for stolen goods: "The dangerous and the ridiculous were necessary to his life, otherwise tenderness would overwhelm him."

At the center of the novel--winner of the 1979 Booker Prize--are Nenna and her truant six- and 11-year-old daughters. The younger sibling "cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness." But the older girl is considerably less blithe. "Small and thin, with dark eyes which already showed an acceptance of the world's shortcomings," Fitzgerald writes, she "was not like her mother and even less like her father. The crucial moment when children realise that their parents are younger than they are had long since been passed by Martha."

Their father is farther afield. Unable to bear the prospect of living on the Grace, he's staying in Stoke Newington, part of London but a lost world to his wife and daughters. Meanwhile, Nenna spends her time going over incidents that seem to have led to her current situation, and the matter of some missing squash racquets becomes of increasing import. Though she is peaceful by nature, experience and poverty are wearing Nenna down. Her confidante Maurice, after a momentary spell of optimism, also returns to his life of little expectation and quiet acceptance: "Tenderly responsive to the self-deceptions of others, he was unfortunately too well able to understand his own."

Penelope Fitzgerald views her creations with deep but wry compassion. Having lived on a barge herself, she offers her expert spin on the dangers, graces, and whimsies of river life. Nenna, too, has become a savant, instantly recognizing on one occasion that the mud encasing the family cat is not from the Reach. This "sagacious brute" is almost as complex as his human counterparts, constantly forced to adjust her notions of vermin and authority. Though Stripey is capable of catching and killing very young rats, the older ones chase her. "The resulting uncertainty as to whether she was coming or going had made her, to some extent, mentally unstable."

As always, Fitzgerald is a master of the initially bizarre juxtaposition. Adjacent sentences often seem like delightful non sequiturs--until they flash together in an effortless evocation of character, era, and human absurdity. Nenna recalls, for instance, how the buds had dropped off the plant her husband rushed to the hospital when Martha was born. She "had never criticized the bloomless azalea. It was the other young mothers in the beds each side of her who had laughed at it. That had been 1951. Two of the new babies in the ward had been christened Festival." Tiny comical epiphanies such as these have caused the author to be dubbed a "British miniaturist." Yet the phrase utterly misses the risks Fitzgerald's novellas take, the discoveries they make, and the endless pleasures they provide. --Kerry Fried

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140 pages

Published September 1st 2003 by Harper Perennial (first published 1979)

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Dec 17, 2012 Jason added it

Shelves: read-2011

While at times inimitably compelling, especially in the way in which a small novel is able to include such scope and grandeur; Offshore tends to the superficial and presents a compelling argument as to why the omniscient third person narrator has largely disappeared in contemporary fiction.

Largely the story of Nenna James and her two small children, aged six and eleven, the novel is told from the point of view of an incredible bevy of characters that live in barges on the Thames in London. This...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Courtney H. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookers

Offshore is a little novel, almost a novella really, that takes place on the Battersea Reach of the Thames and the collection of houseboats – none of which were built to be houseboats, but were repurposed late in their respective lives – stationed there. Not surprisingly, for such an eccentric location, the story concerns the motley crew of eccentric figures who have formed a bit of an outcast society on their boats.
Penelope Fitzgerald hit all the right notes with Offshore. The story is uniqu...more Offshore is a little novel, almost a novella really, that takes place on the Battersea Reach of the Thames and the collection of houseboats – none of which were built to be houseboats, but were repurposed late in their respective lives – stationed there. Not surprisingly, for such an eccentric location, the story concerns the motley crew of eccentric figures who have formed a bit of an outcast society on their boats.
Penelope Fitzgerald hit all the right notes with Offshore. The story is uniquely located and filled with oddball but interesting characters. I don’t say this often, but her characters were almost Dickensian. They were eccentric, yes, but also very human; often, when an author tries to create “eccentric” they try too hard and in the end all you have is the character’s aforementioned eccentricity and a collection of story snippets that remind you of that eccentricity. But Fitzgerald’s characters live and breathe; they have lives that happen to be odd, not lives made up of oddness. The difference is a subtle one, but real, and it is what makes her characters compelling. She has lovely, clear language, and is precise and straightforward in both its imagery and scene movement.
My biggest frustration is that its conclusion is abrupt, at best. It felt as if half the story wasn’t told, as if she lost interest and opted not to write the last few chapters. Maybe that was her intention, but it was no less frustrating. I haven’t seen The Sopranos (spoiler?), but from what I know from friends, the final scene of the final episode of the series cut to black just as the characters were about to be ambushed; or maybe as they were just about to enjoy a meal. Unclear, and entirely frustrating. This seemed extremely parallel (spoiler: it does NOT end with a member of the Italian-American mob opening fire on a restaurant. It isn’t that parallel). I honestly wondered if for some reason the publisher published it in two volumes; or there was a sequel; or that a few chapters were missing from my edition. It was the most abrupt ending I’ve ever read. There was no wrap up; indeed, there seemed to be nothing but loose ends waving in the wind. It is still worth the read, but I wish I had been more prepared for this abruptness.

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Dec 20, 2011 Steven Langdon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Offshore" is quite a short novel (some 50,000 words,) set in an exotic context (a set of mid-London barges on the Thames,) yet it embodies universal themes so powerfully and well that it won the Booker Prize. Within its constrained world, the charged post-1970 British social pageant of class conflict, shifting sexuality and generational differences plays out -- taking on darker and darker tones as this book moves forward. Indelible characters emerge -- there is Nenna, trying to save something f...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Anthony rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: everything-under-the-sun-s-mind

If your a woman drifted and damped by a man either have or not have children. You may read this book. The setting occur at the Thames river where I illustrated as like a squatters area or a haven of 'temporariness'. The story surprises me of how characters intertwine with each other. It talks not the usual family-broken theme but a story of how absurd the feeling of living in a 'barge in unsettling tidal.

The story has a love story of hope and mysteriousness. It may 'flawless' for some reviewers...more

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May 27, 2012 Ali rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As some of you may know, a few years ago I set myself the challenge of reading all the books that had ever won the booker prize. I had at that point already read several of them, and so it seemed a fairly achievable list – although I admit there are a few on the list that I don’t fancy much. There was no reason for my doing this – I don’t believe that books that win big prizes are necessarily any more worthy than any others. I do however find it fascinating each year when the Booker long list an...more
As some of you may know, a few years ago I set myself the challenge of reading all the books that had ever won the booker prize. I had at that point already read several of them, and so it seemed a fairly achievable list – although I admit there are a few on the list that I don’t fancy much. There was no reason for my doing this – I don’t believe that books that win big prizes are necessarily any more worthy than any others. I do however find it fascinating each year when the Booker long list and short list are announced - what has made it on, how are these things chosen? Why do so many great books get left off? The Prize began in 1969 – twice there have been 2 joint winners – so there is 45 books on the list (so much shorter than some of those other reading lists) I have 9 left to read – 3 of these I have TBR. Overall there have been far more that I have liked than not.

So then, Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald which won in 1979 was my latest Booker read. This is only the fourth Penelope Fitzgerald novel that I have read, and I have to say straight off – I enjoyed it enormously. A very busy weekend has forced me to read it slowly – which I am glad of as I have been able to savour it. It is after all a pretty short book.

A quote on the back cover of this edition caught my eye – so I must share it.
“Reading a Penelope Fitzgerald novel is like being taken for a ride in a peculiar kind of car. Everything is of top quality – the engine, the coachwork and the interior all fill you with confidence. Then after a mile or so, someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window”
Sebastian Faulkes.

A mixed group of people live on houseboats on the Thames at Battersea Reach in the early 1960’s. They are each temporarily lost, often eccentric and have come to belong and rely on one another. Willis, a naval artist who has never been to sea, is hoping to sell his boat The Dreadnought before she inevitably sinks. Richard an ex-navy man dominates the Reach as does his much larger boat, while his wife Laura hates the boats and frequently returns to her upper-middle class family. Richard and Laura are the only inhabitants of the Reach with any money. Maurice, a male prostitute, and receiver of stolen goods has become particularly good friends with Nenna, who abandoned by her husband is living on the boat Grace with her two daughters Martha and Tilda.

“During the small hours, tipsy Maurice became an oracle, ambiguous, wayward, but impressive. Evan his voice changed a little. He told the sombre truths of the light-hearted, betraying in a casual hour what was never intended to be shown. If the tide was low the two of them watched the gleams on the foreshore, at half tide they heard the water chuckling, waiting to lift the boats, at flood tide they saw the river as a powerful god, bearded with the white foam of detergents, calling home the twenty-seven lost rivers of London, sighing as the night declined.”

The two girls forage along the foreshore – and don’t always attend school. They explore Battersea and Chelsea, but are more at home on the river. Six year old Tilda wonderfully old for her years is a spiky breath of fresh air.

“Tilda knew very well that the river could be dangerous. Although she had become a native of the boats, and pitied the tideless and ratless life of the Chelsea inhabitants, she respected the water and knew that one could die within sight of the Embankment.”

The characters relationships are altered by the changes in their circumstances, the world of this disparate little community is under threat. The reader senses this fragility of a way of life, from the very start. Fitzgerald perfectly pitches this beautiful little novel. The tidal flow of the river, the rise and fall of the boats, the mud along the river bank – the interactions of her characters come together to create a wonderful sense of time and place.
I have added these quotes from the book because I loved the Fitzgerald’s writing. The descriptions of the river are particularly good I think. This book is a real little gem.
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Apr 24, 2010 Christopher Mcquain rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

With a surprisingly wide array of characters and their commingled dramas contained within its compact length (it's almost more a novella than a novel, in length if not in scope and ambition), Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore is the story of a very particular milieu--certain Thames barge-dwellers sometime in the 1960's--told in a manner I can only describe as distinctly British. Which is not to say that Fitzgerald employs either tea-and-lace charm or Wildean epigram, but rather that she makes so ma...more

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Sep 27, 2010 Teresa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The characters in Penelope Fitzgerald� s Offshore live in a world in between, on a colony of barges in the Battersea Reach on the Thames. For one reason or another, they don� t quite fit into the community on land, but they aren� t quite able to strike out and cut themselves off completely. [return][return]In the first half of this little 140-page book, we get to know the characters and their community, and there's no plot to speak of. Starting at about the halfway point, several characters reac...more

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Jan 18, 2011 Kris McCracken rated it 4 of 5 stars

The story centres on a disparate community that live on barges in Battersea – on the Thames – in the early 1960s. The novel ponders the existence (subsistence) of those who do not belong to the land, but also not properly to the sea. As such, it is an odd little book.

Just over 130 pages, Fitzgerald packs it full of peculiar characters, not quite depressed, but never truly happy. This provides many opportunities to display some of the wittiest and most melancholy prose you can find.

At the centre...more

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Nov 13, 2009 George rated it 3 of 5 stars

Offshore is set mostly on barges moored along the banks of the Thames in London. As is pointed out by the author, the place where these characters live is between the land and the water, and the idea of it being a place of transition becomes one of the book's themes. This book reminded me strongly of the writings of Muriel Spark -- the writing is straightforward, with little to complain about; the characters are intriguing and well- if not fully developed; and the plot is minimal, although there...more

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Mar 06, 2009 bookczuk rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to bookczuk by: lucybrown

Shelves: bookcrossing, first-novel-or-book, satisfying, read-on-recommendation

When I first read this book, I wrote, "It is a delicious book. I am in love with it. I savor the words, the characters, the descriptions. I do not want it to end."

When I finished it, I wrote, "Ah yes- I stand by what I said earlier; an enchanting book.

The characters are marvelous- from the very proper ex-navy man Richard, to Maurice-by occupation a male prostitute, by happenstance a receiver of stolen goods, to the very bemused Nenna- trying to sort our her life, to her youngest daughter Tilda w...more

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Jul 19, 2012 Mac rated it 1 of 5 stars

Right from the beginning, several interesting, eccentric characters are introduced, and they live in an intriguing, unusual place, houseboats on the Thames. So from the beginning, the stage is set for an engrossing novel by a prestigious author. But for me at least, the book fails to deliver in many ways. (I say "for me at least" because the novel is praised on Goodreads, and it won the Booker Prize in 1979.)

The shortcomings: The plot is obscure and thin, close to nonexistent. Though the relatio...more

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Dec 28, 2010 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars

I felt like I was on a bus ride eavesdropping on multiple conversations, each interesting and incomplete. You may not know what will happen to these people – the precocious daughters, their mother who’s emotionally compromised, the responsible man, the intuitive man, and the romantically clueless man – but you’ve had a glimpse of what they’re about, their eccentricities. Despite its short length, you don’t end up feeling short-changed. Part of the appeal for me is the setting. I knew the streets...more

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May 28, 2009 Bibliophile rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, fiction

Penelope Fitzgerald is one of those writers whose books I always think I'm going to like and then find out that I just don't. A few years ago, in a crazed fit of consumption (mostly induced by the pretty covers), I bought several of her books. And every so often, I read one of them and confirm that I'm not a fan. The latest Fitzgerald novel I read was Offshore, since it promised to be quite short. And although I found (some of) the characters quite interesting (particularly the two girls), the n...more

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Dec 17, 2011 Allison rated it 4 of 5 stars

Number two in the series that my students this fall were assigned to read. I have bits of an essay/argument together and some quotes down, but far from a finished product. After recently reading The World According to Garp, which is an epic type of novel in it's scope, reading a short story like this (at least that's what it felt like) was a remarkable difference. There are many things unsaid and many things left hanging for the imagination to unfold. It's like a chapter or two of Garp. In it, t...more

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Dec 08, 2010 Kirsty Darbyshire rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: paperback

This was the book of Fitzgerald's that I really wanted to read and I really liked it when I got it. It seems that she wrote a number of novels that were basically about bits of her life. I've read her working at the BBC and running a bookshop books; this one is about living in a boat on the Thames in the 1960s.

Like her other books this one rather rambles around and doesn't have an obvious plot line; though ramble ought to be the wrong word for it as it's quite a short book. It's rather an inters...more

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Nov 07, 2010 Linda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: prize-winners

""It's his own fault if he's kind. It's not the kind who inherit the earth, it's the poor, the humble, and the meek." "What do you think happens to the kind, then?" "They get kicked in the teeth."

"Heinrich was exceptionally elegant. An upbringing designed to carry him through changes of regime and frontier, possible loss of every worldly possession, and, in the event of crisis, protracted stays with distant relatives ensconced wherever the aristocracy was tolerated, from the Polish border to Hyd...more

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Sep 03, 2012 Mardel Fehrenbach rated it 4 of 5 stars

Offshore is an excellent short novel about a group of people who have somehow found themselves washed up on the shoals, or in this case on a group of houseboats on Battersea Reach, as they try to adapt to a changing world and their own changing roles in that world. The writing is compelling, the descriptions are compelling, and the way in which Fitzgerald combines the different voices and perspectives of the various characters, intermingling their inner monologues with their external interaction...more

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Jan 13, 2011 Sarah rated it 2 of 5 stars

I admit, I couldn't finish this one. I gave it over 50 pages but just couldn't get involved in the story, my mind wandered and as a result I didn't know one character from another or what was happening. I'm not going to blame this wholly on Fitzgerald. Some readers hated Ann Enright's The Gathering and I loved it. Sometimes I just don't take to a writer's voice. I had no patience for the long imaginary trial scene that took place in the main character's head. It bored me and seemed useless. I al...more

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Nov 14, 2011 Deb rated it 4 of 5 stars

Penelope Fitzgerald's insightful, clever, lean, humorous writing is not to be missed. Reading Offshore gives one pages of this first-class writing. I loved this book.
The plot is a loosely woven visit to a group of characters who live on the Thames. The reader is thrown immediately into the mix. As one reads, the characters are not so much introduced as they are encountered in the same way one encounters strangers in real life. Through their conversations and interactions with each other and cir...more

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Nov 01, 2009 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read a few of Penelope Fitzgerald's books a long time ago and scenes from those books are still clear in my mind. She's just a great storyteller, you find yourself immediately immersed in her world. This book is no different- I breezed through its 140 pages and desperately wanted the story to go on, and on, and on... she creates characters that feel like real people whose lives continue beyond the book's pages, and you can't help but want to follow their lives indefinitely. I still feel like R...more

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Feb 25, 2013 San rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: st-a-s-book-club

I'm still trying to figure this one out. I liked the characters but I feel like I am missing something. I have thought about the story more since I finished than I usually do. I've decided that the living arrangements on the boats represent the characters attachment to civilization in general: tenuous, unusual, imperfect (leaky?), and interdependent. The writing style took some getting used to but was more interesting than many books I've read recently. I confess that I had higher expectations b...more

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Dec 14, 2009 M. D. Hudson rated it 5 of 5 stars

I cried a couple of times during this novel. Really, it is lovely. Fitzgerald does human frailty, futility and failure better than anyone anywhere since Flaubert. She never quite pities her characters and she almost always respects them, even the occasional scoundrel. This book is about a bunch of people of varying degree of maladjustment who live on leaky old boats on the Thames. There’s a plot, sort of, but it doesn’t matter. This book is so much better than Ian McEwan’s “Saturday” that he sho...more

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Nov 07, 2009 Sam Schulman rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a better place to start with Penelope Fitzgerald. She makes all other literary fiction seem like the boring, phony sheiss it is. It takes place among the semi-failures who live on boats permanently moored in the Thames, and is not quite too sad to bear.
She is the niece of Father Knox, the first official Catholic padre for Oxford students (I think) and a wonderful writer, the author of the great, infinitely re-readable book Enthusiasm, and a series of books with wonderful titles: The Mass...more

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Jun 08, 2009 Lynne-marie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fitzgerald won the Booker for this novel and it's easy to see why. Although her own personal negative view of the universe and of human interactions deeply colors every aspect of the book, her writerly attention to tiny details throughout is staggering. She makes the life of the Reach come to life in all its pathetic but also its particular ways. So, too, with its people, who are picked out in their humanity and their frailty. That Fitzgerald was at one time called Britain's greatest writer is p...more

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Mar 31, 2012 Anmiryam rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I told myself that this was the year that I would read all of the Booker Prize winners -- including those I've read at times in that past. Well, here we are at the end of the first quarter and I've read exactly two of the 44 prize winning books. I also have to admit that both of these are among the shortest of the winners. I loved Penelope Lively's "Moon Tiger" so I figured it would be sensible to read another Penelope, Penelope Fitzgerald, in an attempt to catch up a bit.

"Offshore" was less sat...more

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Mar 27, 2012 Jogle rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, booker-winners

‘Offshore’,the shortest book ever to win the Booker Prize, is a concentrated, slowly meandering stretch of prose, characteristic of the River Thames on which it is set. Almost devoid of plot, Fitzgerald concentrates on the characterisation of a disparate group of Battersea houseboat dwellers in 1961, like their crafts, loosely tied together and in various degrees of seaworthiness. This mildly Bohemian flotsam is caught halfway between land and water, always subject to the vagaries of life’s tide...more ‘Offshore’,the shortest book ever to win the Booker Prize, is a concentrated, slowly meandering stretch of prose, characteristic of the River Thames on which it is set. Almost devoid of plot, Fitzgerald concentrates on the characterisation of a disparate group of Battersea houseboat dwellers in 1961, like their crafts, loosely tied together and in various degrees of seaworthiness. This mildly Bohemian flotsam is caught halfway between land and water, always subject to the vagaries of life’s tides.

Fitzgerald is a master of portraying characters with an economy of words. Individuals are often referred to by the name of their boat, the description of which gives added insight into each owner’s personality. What plot there is, centres loosely on Canadian single parent, Nenna, separated from her husband amidst disagreements over the houseboat lifestyle. The problems of her ‘co-sailors’ are linked into her efforts to reconcile her husband to the family and the decaying boat.

Fitzgerald wonderfully invokes the feelings of the tidal stretch of the Thames and the decaying community trying to live their version of an alternative lifestyle – I believe she had herself been a houseboat dweller. The book reads a little like an afternoon radio play – short conversational scenes involving all the individuals in the community, mostly imbued with a slightly melancholic thread. The humour seems dated now, with the drop out Nenna wanting someone to help her correctly fold maps and flatten the broadsheet newspapers.

The book is beautiful in its own way with a very quirky Englishness to it, although I find it hard to agree it worthy of a major prize. The different characters approach the river life in different ways, from wannabe commodores, to rent boy, to Nenna, but ultimately the river washes on, taking everything with it. A miniature piece whose brevity leaves out so much but whose prose is sometimes beautiful as even mist on the sludgy Thames.

Short, atmospheric, but with something missing.
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Feb 16, 2012 Angus rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: man-booker-prize, reviewed-and-blogged

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

Of boats and, what?

After almost a year of reading this, I am still confused whether to like this or not. You have to somehow give the author credit for the sparseness of the text. The book is like a pamphlet; one could use it to swat a hardheaded fly. One could even finish this in a couple of hours, if he is a fast reader.

But after finishing, what? I remember telling one of my bookish friends that the novel ended in a strangely astonishing way. My reaction was,...more

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Feb 14, 2011 Amy Do rated it 4 of 5 stars

Published in 1979, “Offshore” is Penelope Fitzgerald’s fifth published work and third novel, and surprising (and rather controversially) beat William Golding’s “Darkness Visible” and V.S. Naipaul’s “A Bend in the River” , two masterful novels in the same year, to win the Booker Prize. Not mind-blowing powerful and ostentatiously remarkable, “Offshore” rose above the rest with its delicate, elegant and quiet charm, wit and beauty. The central theme, personal relationships within a small group of...more Published in 1979, “Offshore” is Penelope Fitzgerald’s fifth published work and third novel, and surprising (and rather controversially) beat William Golding’s “Darkness Visible” and V.S. Naipaul’s “A Bend in the River” , two masterful novels in the same year, to win the Booker Prize. Not mind-blowing powerful and ostentatiously remarkable, “Offshore” rose above the rest with its delicate, elegant and quiet charm, wit and beauty. The central theme, personal relationships within a small group of people who are neighbours in a special way, is described vividly and lively through strokes of a keen and deep observer. In this novel, characters from different backgrounds with different troubles and personalities come together. There is Maurice, a male prostitute who unconditionally supports an acquaintance named Harry; there is Richard who appears right from the start as a respected veteran to whom people look up; there is Willis, an old painter and widower living quietly with his retired life; there is Nenna who seems lost and powerless with her marriage, which is the only thing she has ever failed to rescue even with her instinct to fix people’s unhappiness, while raising two daughters, Martha, thirteen, and Tilda, six, whose precocity adds another aspect to the group of eccentric characters here. Along with them, Laura, Richard’s wife and James, Nenna’s estranged husband, are part of the unstable lifestyle that they all share. Living offshore on boats with the waves and tides of the Thames is never an easy thing, and their lives are covered with a worrisome like no other, yet they still maintain the admirable compassion for one another. The themes of friendship, compassion, sympathy, liminality, pursuit of happiness, family responsibilities, sacrifices, love and the fight for important things in one’s life are all intertwined on the fluctuating waves of the restless river.

Much like getting only sections and incomplete parts of one’s story but being able to string clues together and infer an intriguing journey, readers are abroad with the characters on their respective dwellings – boats along the bank of Thames, to join the journey with them. The oddity of their homes alone leads to the eccentricity in their lifestyles, their relationships with one another, and their unique problems. The most outstanding and memorable part of this novel is the circumstance and milieu in which the story develops. It is rare and remarkable occasion that a novel pays attention to this group people deemed outcasts or runaways and showing the beauty of their relationships. They forget their own problems to aid each other through the difficulty of not just living conditions but also social issues arising from their lifestyle. A meeting is summoned immediately when “Dreadnought” shows signs of leaking so everyone in the neighbourhood can give a hand in solving the problem. Maurice takes the time after his working nights to listen to Nenna’s sorrow and pain of fighting desperately for her husband. Willis takes care of Nenna’s daughters voluntarily; it seems like it is his instinct to make sure they are safe. Other people even think he is their grandfather, and the three of them accept the roles naturally and even delightedly, especially through Tilda’s caring words, characterized with such warmth and innocent compassion, “Dear grandfather, are you sure you are not weary? Let us return to our ship. Take my arm, for though I am young, I am strong”. Readers realize they have all become family members and are touched by the nature of such precious ties between neighbours who are only separated by a step above the water from boat to boat.

The care and sympathy they have for one another are important as they have to face difficulties with the offshore lifestyle. Troubles from the essentials like boat leaks and safety abroad to larger, invisible issues like relationships, marriage, children’s education and earning a living, arise everyday and they only have each other to rely on, especially with how the remainder of the society, and even the spouses of some dwellers, disapprove with their choice of living. Postmen refuse to climb over the dangerous planks to deliver letters and telephone becomes a scarcity with only one for the entire five boats. It is much harder to cope with the limited life and people’s emotions are affected consequently. Laura, for example, tries to hide her unhappiness of living away from the central of the town and left alone with nothing to do on the boat, but in the end still gives up and leaves her husband. The most important emotional damage is depicted in Nenna’s marriage with Edward, who refuses forcefully to live with her on the boat. Her love for him could not overcome his disapproval of her home. However, feeling much attached to “Grace”, her boat, and knowing how much her children enjoy the water and the secluded life offshore, her only way of dealing with the problem is to hope and beg for his return. Their love is separated by a difference so deep and crucial that even their need for one another cannot reunite them. The theme of love prevented by an obstacle appears in this novel subtly and quietly, disguised by the seemingly culpable stubborn of a powerless wife.

Their marriage also highlighted the theme of happiness. Fitzgerald intelligently included a witty passage conveying her opinion on people’s pursuit of happiness in the middle of the setting for the story, where readers least expected it. It is not a premature introduction of such an important theme, however, because as the story unfolds, her statements are even further described through people’s choices and actions. “Why should you think [going away] is a good thing to do? Why should it make you any happier?” We fool ourselves sometimes with the hope that giving up on something difficult would make us satisfied. “There isn’t one kind of happiness, there’s all kinds.” The key to happiness is how we handle our decisions in life. “When you decide, you multiply the things you might have done and now never can. If there’s even one person who might be hurt by a decision, you should never make it.” Decisions affect happiness directly and learning how to make them is our pursuit of happiness; and that is never so easy. Fitzgerald understands this and sympathizes with people who are unhappy because they are stuck in between decisions, reluctant to leave or stay, “It’s right for us to live where we do, between land and water. You, my dear, you’re half in love with your husband, then there’s Martha [...]”

She observes the transition, the moment where things exists half on this side and half on this side and describes them so stunningly readers might have to pause and realize for themselves how common it is, “there’s Martha who’s half a child and half a girl, Richard who can’t give up being half in the Navy, Willis who’s half an artist and half a longshoreman, a cat who’s half alive and half dead.” There is nothing wrong with being in between; the transition is always inevitable, yet we commonly fail to realize this and blame people who are stuck there for being reluctant, waffling or indecisive. The metaphor of these ‘half-land-half-water’ dwellers represents a larger scale of people out there, mixed between feelings, or going through different stages, or just experiencing changes in their lives. That moment of liminality occurs to everyone at some point, which is why, after the initial seemingly eccentricity of the setting of “Offshore”, readers can relate slowly to the internal conflicts of these characters.

Penelope Fitzgerald, by creating her own fiction of this special group of people, also describes a small community with much love and care. It would be such a fortunate thing to have neighbours like Mr. and Mrs. Woodies, who would extend a welcoming support to Willis when his boat sank. They were all ready and packed to leave the boat, but happily stayed to help him after his mishap accident. Willis, Maurice, Mr. Woodies and even young Heinrich who was only visiting, all showed such kindness by taking care of Nenna’s daughters while she went to find her husband to make things right. Even the girls, Martha and Tilda, showed exceptional responsibility and intuitive care with the way they helped and rescued the injured and near-dead Richard. Even to Stripey, Nenna’s cat, the neighbours gave great care, especially when she gave birth on the “Rochester”. That closeness of the micro community created an invisible warmth throughout the novel, despite the setting on the cold river.

With a descriptive and slow-paced writing style, Penelope Fitzgerald took her time and stretched her readers’ patience a little bit to present a collection of a few people’s life stories as they struggle with life on the bank of the Thames. Her elegant descriptions of the sceneries and poetic lines brought a calm and warm mood to her novel. It is a delight indulging and letting myself follow the mishap, melancholic but also lively and loving footsteps of these characters as they search for what they want in life. Deep inside every boat, Rochester, Dreadnought, Grace or Lord Jim, there is a sadness, worry, sorrow, conflict etc., hidden carefully and are often neglected if the outsider does not bother to look harder and feel for them. The novel is a gentle reminder that there are stories about people’s struggles and conflicts to achieve happiness out there worth discovering. Happiness is a universal goal and one way to achieve it is to share, relate and care for each other the way these characters do. The simplest stories can depict the most important themes of life; the most ordinary people can go through the untold and silent extraordinary journeys that bring them closer to home, love and happiness. It is a delight at the end of the day, to read about such small, quaint and easy to relate to stories, and feel warm and assured that we can open our hearts and care for others, like Martha and Tilda, or Willis. It is also surprising in the end to recognize how easy it is to get lost in a novel and return to reality with new feelings and hopes. The power of Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel lies in her ability to make us sympathize with people we do not know, we are not familiar with, yet still showing such admirable characteristics of helping each other survive and look forward to better endings.

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Mar 18, 2012 Manda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker-prize-winner, read-in-2012

This is an odd little book, but one that is very compelling. Really, this book should not work - there is an omnipresent narrator (the book is written in the third person) and one of the narrator's comments - about how the boutiques of London would all have changed entirely after a couple of years - destroyed the mood for me almost entirely. The advice of writing books is to have nothing happen that doesn't move the story forward, but we have Heinrich van Furstenfeld's sudden, short appearance....more

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Jan 29, 2011 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

An oddlot of characters living on barges and converted minesweepers on the Thames in London-- each refuses to go down without a struggle. Beautifully written, humorous, almost unbearably sad. Scenes that stick in my memory: the gas light of a stove shining above the water in a sinking boat, two children retrieving Victorian tiles from dangerously deep river mud, Nenna walking home from a disastrous meeting with her husband, and the last scene on the Maurice in a storm. The setting and the inhabi...more

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About Penelope Fitzgerald

She was the daughter of Punch editor Edmund Knox (E.V. Knox) and the niece of theologian and crime writer Ronald Knox (Ronald A. Knox), cryptographer Dilly Knox and Bible scholar Wilfred Knox.

"When I was young," Fitzgerald later wrote, "I took my father and my three uncles for granted, and it never occurred to me that everyone else wasn't like them. Later on, I found that this was a mistake, but...more

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