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A review by schnauzermum
Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald
5.0
This is perfect. Fitzgerald combines humour and sadness in this story of a collection of eccentric people:
‘The barge-dwellers, creatures neither of firm land nor water, would have liked to be more respectable than they were. They aspired towards the Chelsea shore, where, in the early 1960s, many thousands lived with sensible occupations and adequate amounts of money. But a certain failure, distressing to themselves, to be like other people, caused them to sink back, with so much else that drifted or was washed up, into the mud moorings of the great ride way.’
In the introduction to my edition, Fitzgerald’s biographer, Hermione Lee, describes her as ‘a humorous writer with a tragic sense of life’ and quotes the author herself: ‘I am drawn to people who seem to have been born defeated or even profoundly lost’. In the hands of another writer, the sadness might be overwhelming. It is almost miraculous how Fitzgerald writes with such humour and compassion, even about characters you expect to be unsympathetic.
Not a word is wasted, and Fitzgerald writes elegantly beautiful prose. The ending is brilliant too.
‘The barge-dwellers, creatures neither of firm land nor water, would have liked to be more respectable than they were. They aspired towards the Chelsea shore, where, in the early 1960s, many thousands lived with sensible occupations and adequate amounts of money. But a certain failure, distressing to themselves, to be like other people, caused them to sink back, with so much else that drifted or was washed up, into the mud moorings of the great ride way.’
In the introduction to my edition, Fitzgerald’s biographer, Hermione Lee, describes her as ‘a humorous writer with a tragic sense of life’ and quotes the author herself: ‘I am drawn to people who seem to have been born defeated or even profoundly lost’. In the hands of another writer, the sadness might be overwhelming. It is almost miraculous how Fitzgerald writes with such humour and compassion, even about characters you expect to be unsympathetic.
Not a word is wasted, and Fitzgerald writes elegantly beautiful prose. The ending is brilliant too.