Scan barcode
A review by grubstlodger
Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald
4.0
Another of Penelope Fitzgerald’s meticulous and precise little novels. This is more in the vain of The Bookshop, inspired by a part of her own life, where she lived on a barge in Battersea Reach, was friends with a rent boy, hid her daughters from truant officers and eventually lost her home beneath the murk of the Thames.
Also like The Bookshop, the characters were clear, precise and a pleasure to spend time with, even with their flaws. They are all amphibious people; halfway between river and shore, between good and bad, lost in a geographic limbo.
There is Nenna, a woman who feels like a lost little girl and Maurice the rent boy, they are both drifters, living life by not deciding because only by making a decision can they feel regret. There is Richard who lives life in a regimented manner, and his wife who feels unhappy with that life. The old painter Willis, who felt ‘his moral standards were much the same as Richard’s, only he did not feel he was well enough off to apply them as often.’ There’s also Nenna’s little girls; Tilda who has become a creature of the river and Martha, who is the most mature person there.
The book does contain events, particularly in the last third, leading to another one of her strange, aborted non-endings. It’s more about the snapshots of barge life and the strange little half-lives that bob around just offshore.
Also like The Bookshop, the characters were clear, precise and a pleasure to spend time with, even with their flaws. They are all amphibious people; halfway between river and shore, between good and bad, lost in a geographic limbo.
There is Nenna, a woman who feels like a lost little girl and Maurice the rent boy, they are both drifters, living life by not deciding because only by making a decision can they feel regret. There is Richard who lives life in a regimented manner, and his wife who feels unhappy with that life. The old painter Willis, who felt ‘his moral standards were much the same as Richard’s, only he did not feel he was well enough off to apply them as often.’ There’s also Nenna’s little girls; Tilda who has become a creature of the river and Martha, who is the most mature person there.
The book does contain events, particularly in the last third, leading to another one of her strange, aborted non-endings. It’s more about the snapshots of barge life and the strange little half-lives that bob around just offshore.