Offshore: A Novel

"Offshore" is a slender, accessible novel that some readers might think, as some critics did when it was first published and as I did on first reading it, a bit of a lark--quirky, often very funny, but ultimately insubstantial. When I finished it nearly a year ago, I didn't review it here; I'd thought it slight in comparison to some of Fitzgerald's other novels (each of which I have loved) and just wasn't sure what to make of it. But this little "tragi-farce"--the author's word, actually--has grown on me; I've repeatedly referred back to my copy and on a recent weekend found myself reading the whole thing over again.What resonates on each subsequent skimming or reading is the subtle, brilliant way Fitzgerald portrays the novel's tight-knit community as, fundamentally, an unorthodox family. Set in the early 1960s, the story is surprisingly autobiographical (something I didn't know when I'd first read it); Fitzgerald, too, lived on an old barge on the Thames for two years with her three children. Although her heroine, Nenna, is a decade younger than the author had been during her river years, and here there are two children rather than three, it can be disarming to understand that this truly odd assortment of characters has been transformed from real life.At times, the two girls (as precocious as children are in all of Fitzgerald's novels) steal the show. Their quips are frequently childish and clever all at once: "I hate very old toys," retorts six-year-old Tilda. "They may have been alright for very old children." Observant and acrobatic river rats, both girls are religiously absent from school and instead get their "education" from their surroundings, exhibiting a maturity often lacking in the neighbors. Among the adults is a rentboy named Maurice, whose illicit, "professional" activities are complicated by his allowing his boat to be used for the transfer of stolen goods. Sam, an elderly painter, is trying to sell his boat and would appreciate it, thank you very much, if his neighbors wouldn't mention the leak to prospective buyers. Richard, the unofficial leader of the bunch, owns the only shipshape vessel and lives apart from his wife, who detests life on the river. Richard's situation mirrors that of Nenna, whose inept, unemployable husband also lives apart from his family and who wants her to sell the damn boat and end this bizarre display of independence: "It's not for me to come for you, it's for you to get rid of it. I'm not quarreling about money. If you don't want to sell it, why can't you rent it out?"There is in fact a plot, and all the pieces come together, almost tragically and yet entertainingly in a madcap climax. But the real focuses of the book are the erstwhile network of friends that forms on the river and the assertion of responsibility (or, in some cases, the lack of it) by each of the main characters. This is a book that pays rereading; it's both funnier and more heartrending the second time out.

What I like about Penelope Fitzgerald's writing is the accessibility and how she develops her characters. I also like that she writes about real life, not some shined up and polished view of what might have been. But that is also why I docked the book one star, sometimes you want a book that ends in such a way that you feel good about where the characters have arrived. This is the second book I've read by Fitzgerald, the first was The Bookshop, and both books are about real life with all its ambiguity, helpful people, bitter people, and chance meetings that happen and don't happen. I will continue to search out other books by Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald's cast of characters in this Booker Prize novella are a motley group of people living in converted barges and small craft moored by the banks of the Thames, rising with the tide then sinking back into the mud. Their self-appointed chairman is a super-shipshape ex-Naval officer living on a converted minesweeper. At the other end of the scale are an aging artist and a gregarious male prostitute. Quite different from one another, they are nonetheless linked by a common suspicion of land-bound life, and by their willingness to share each other's problems. The central character, Nenna James, still longing for her absent husband, is the single mother of two precocious girls, who gain a richer education at the water's edge than in their occasional visits to school, where the nuns pray regularly for their father's return.Page after page, this is a miraculous book, miraculous in its genial understanding of character, doubly miraculous in its powers of description. For example, the effect of the rising tide: "On every barge on the Reach a very faint ominous tap, no louder than the door of a cupboard shutting, would be followed by louder ones from every strake, timber and weatherboard, a fusillade of thunderous creaking, and even groans that seemed human. The crazy old vessels, riding high in the water without cargo, awaited their owners' return." Or the description of Stripey, the James children's mud-encrusted cat: "The ship's cat was in every way appropriate to the Reach. She habitually moved in a kind of nautical crawl, with her stomach close to the deck, as though close-furled and ready for dirty weather."For a while, the closed community of oddball characters seems almost a set-up for an Agatha Christie mystery, and Fitzgerald's first novel,  THE GOLDEN CHILD , was indeed a mystery. But her remaining eight books -- all short, all astonishingly different -- take a more subtle tack. Whether based on her own life (including OFFSHORE and her other Booker nomination,  THE BOOKSHOP ) or set in distant times and places (pre-Revolutionary Moscow in  THE BEGINNING OF SPRING , Goethe's Germany in  THE BLUE FLOWER ), they all share a sense of slightly sad comedy. So it is with OFFSHORE. Miracle-worker though she is, Fitzgerald eschews the easy miracle of a neatly sewn-up ending. 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. But the close community of the opening has broken up. Writing in 1979, Fitzgerald sets the book in 1962, during the brief flowering of "swinging London," after which everything would change. Though no more than a faint background presence, she is extraordinarily sensitive to the pathos of impermanence. And she paints these lives lived on the margins of the tides with both a smile and a tear for their inherent unstability.

I read this at the same time I was reading Penelope Fitzgerald's biography by Hermione Lee. It made the novel far more interesting than I might have found it reading it without that context. On its own, I'd describe it as a slim, elegant little book that in its presentation mirrors the disjointed and confused circumstances of Nenna, a woman separated from her husband, who has fallen on hard times and ended up on a leaky barge on a dank and polluted tidal river, with two children who are far more resourceful than she is. That this is based on a low point in Fitzgerald's own life is what makes it much more interesting. It is a novel and not a memoir, so I suppose one can't read too much into it, but while peopled by quirky characters and a kind of camaraderie, it sounds like it was pretty grim...an experience that couldn't really be prettied up.

This is a slim, powerful novel about a small community of people living on houseboats on the River Thames at Battersea Reach in 1960s London. Anchored on the southern shore, next to the warehouses, brewery and rubbish disposal centre, they long to be positioned on the prosperous Chelsea shore opposite. In ‘Offshore’, Penelope Fitzgerald draws you into the world of Dreadnought, Grace, Maurice, Lord Jim and Rochester – those are the boats – and their occupants.They live in close, intimate proximity as the boats are tied to each other, only one is fastened to the wharf. Despite this, each person lives in an individual island of loneliness caused by marriage, poverty, sexuality, or just being different. Their lives are governed by tidal movement. ‘On every barge on the Reach a very faint ominous tap, no louder than the door of a cupboard shutting, would be followed by louder ones from every strake, timber and weatherboard, a fusillade of thunderous creaking, and even groans that seemed human. The crazy old vessels, riding high in the water without cargo, awaited their owner’s return.’The people are inter-dependent but don’t know it until a crisis happens. The catalyst is Nenna, a young mother separated from her husband. She lives on Grace with her two children, Tilda and Martha, who run wild in the mud. One day, when they find antique painted tiles and sell them at an antiques shop on King’s Road, the two children seem more mature and capable than their mother. Nenna’s neighbours act as counsellors, offering marriage advice, boat help, and babysitting services. Richard, the de facto leader of the boat community, worries that his wife is bored and wants to retire to a house advertised in ‘Country Life’ magazine. Meanwhile Willis, a struggling artist, who lives on Dreadnought, has a leak. This endangers his plan to sell the boat.A beautifully-written thoughtful novel showing how very different people can rub along together.‘Offshore’ won the Booker Prize in 1979, a year sandwiched between Iris Murdoch in 1978 for ‘The Sea The Sea’ and ‘Rites of Passage’ by William Golding in 1980. Fitzgerald had been shortlisted the previous year for ‘The Bookshop’ and would be again in 1988 with ‘The Beginning of Spring’. What a golden time that was.

This is the sort of book that should win the Booker Prize. It’s readable by anyone and has a good story with good characters. The book captures well the life of river boat dwellers on the Thames in 1961. Some of the scenes could have been longer and more detailed. However, it is better to leave the reader wishing for more than to have long drawn scenes that are too long. I was surprised by how Bohemian the shops in Chelsea were back then and would have associated the descriptions with the late 1960s, but I assume that the author knew firsthand what she was writing about. The one thing that I was unhappy about was the implication that all river boats are damp. This is only true if they are badly maintained. I have friends who live on a boat. As it’s a small space, it’s easy to heat and very cosy. The characters in the book either didn’t have the means or the inclination to maintain their boats. At first I wasn’t happy about the ending and that would have downgraded my rating of the book. I now think that it was a very satisfactory finish, so am happy to give five stars. Some may prefer more artsy, impenetrable books and this is not for them. If you want an easy, enjoyable read, give this a try.

This book really is beautifully written. All the characters are as vulnerable as their leaky barges. Would health and safety allow them now? They are living on the edge of London, right IN the river. But though they are often in peril - Nenna walking home shoeless from Stoke Newington to Chelsea, Richard felled by the truly wicked Harry - somehow a fairy godmother/father will come along. Spoilers alert! Harry may harm Tilly, but she sensibly stays at the top of her mast. The courteous Heinrich falls in love with Martha. Nenna finds love with Richard. And Nenna's absent husband saves Maurice, the rent boy, from being blown up by Harry's booby trap (I think). Yes there are some inconsistencies. Family planning shops? I don't remember those! Does she mean the mysterious "rubber shops" that sold dildoes as "neck massagers" and, presumably, condoms? And if the girls are mad on Elvis and Cliff, how can there be late-60s boutiques in the Kings' Road?

You live on a barge on The Thames they said - you must have read Offshore. Well I hadn't, until now that is. Despite that fact that the book is set in the early 60s and written in the 70s - (ignore what the introductions may try to have you believe) life on the water hasn't changed that much. Within the first few paragraphs I knew these people - I'd lived on a 'squat mooring' where you had to climb from boat to boat, where some of the boats were gradually being reclaimed by the water and where there was the oddest mix of people who all managed to get along.The story is of a young woman with 2 children (gradually going feral) who decided to up from the land to the water, trying to salvage her relationship as well as keep her boat afloat, much to the disapproval of her relatives and the disgust of her husband who is living on the land out in East London. The boat is moored on the Battersea reach in easy walking distance of the then swinging Kings Road. The boaters on the mooring you can still meet every day. There's a delightful chap trying to sell his boat which has a serious leak problem so people can only view at low tide. Spoiler alert - it ends badly and dramatically. There's anther chap who co-ordinates the boater community - it helps that's he has a goodly supply of alcohol and access to a phone. The post now will only deliver to a land address - the postman having once too many times fallen off the gangplanks precariously positioned between the boats.Whilst this is all very well observed there is also a darker tale emerging as if out of the mists that hang around the river's surface. The young woman ventures over to the East End to try and see her estranged husband who she still deeply loves. It doesn't work out at all well and she finds herself back on the street minus her purse and eventually minus her shoes. The description of her flight back home and rescue by a kind hearted cabbie is deeply unsettling. As is the attempted murder of one of the boaters by someone who can only be described in the terminology of the day as a 'spiv' but not the George Cole of St Trinian's type - a much darker and more dangerous and ruthless one. The sinking of the boat, the attempted murder, the disintegration of a relationship all are factors in that boater community gradually drifting away and mostly back on to the land.Offshore is beautifully written, funny and poignant. The author lived on the water and it shows in her wry observations of things boaters think perfectly normal yet make other people do a double take. A book to be savoured on first reading and then reread with increasing pleasure .

I loved this novel. It's so light, so quick, yet it captures the moment and the lifestyle perfectly. There are bewitching descriptions of the river in all its moods - in particular the long passage describing in detail the turning of the tide and how it affects every vessel in turn and every part of the boat, so that the inhabitant knows exactly what will happen at each moment. The rather strange children add to the pleasure - especially six-year-old Tilda, with her knowledge and clear thinking (perhaps due to spending so little time at school.) The economy of words and the repartee are a pleasure, as are the interconnected lives of the boat dwellers. The actual story is slight. This is a book to be enjoyed for the writing rather than the plot.