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A review by zoewong
Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald
“It’s right for us to live where we do, between land and water.”
Honestly I bought this for $1 at the RB library because I liked the cover but I am glad I did! Very short / sparse but it felt like it ended in the right place and as the blurb on the front says, this book feels like looking at Turner’s painting of the Battersea Bridge.
I liked how the characters moved with and were shaped by the river - “creatures neither of firm land nor water, [who] would have liked to be more respectable than they were” (2). They sort of reminded me of this sentiment from The Four Loves about affection: “The people with whom you are thrown together in the family, the college, the mess, the ship (!), the religious house... Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.”
Honestly I bought this for $1 at the RB library because I liked the cover but I am glad I did! Very short / sparse but it felt like it ended in the right place and as the blurb on the front says, this book feels like looking at Turner’s painting of the Battersea Bridge.
I liked how the characters moved with and were shaped by the river - “creatures neither of firm land nor water, [who] would have liked to be more respectable than they were” (2). They sort of reminded me of this sentiment from The Four Loves about affection: “The people with whom you are thrown together in the family, the college, the mess, the ship (!), the religious house... Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.”