Offshore

Name: Offshore
Brand: Harper UK
Availability: InStock
Author: Penelope Fitzgerald
ISBN: 9780008235581

Author: Penelope Fitzgerald, Alan Hollinghurst

Narrator: Alan Hollinghurst, Jot Davies, Stephanie Racine

Unabridged: 5 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Fourth Estate

Published: 12/15/2016

Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Urban, Satire, Humorous, Romance

Synopsis

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE FEATURED ON BBC’S BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB Penelope Fitzgerald’s Booker Prize-winning novel of loneliness and connecting is set among the houseboat community of the Thames, with an introduction from Alan Hollinghurst. On Battersea Reach, a mixed bag of the temporarily lost and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the tide of the Thames. There is good-natured Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, by chance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard, an ex-navy man whose boat, much like its owner, dominates the Reach. Then there is Nenna, an abandoned wife and mother of two young girls running wild on the muddy foreshore, whose domestic predicament, as it deepens, will draw this disparate community together.

About Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald was a Booker Prize-winning English novelist, poet, essayist, and biographer. In 2008, the Times included her in a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945." In 2012, the Observer named her final novel, The Blue Flower, as one of "the ten best historical novels."

Reviews

Goodreads review by Violet on April 26, 2019

A houseboat is perhaps the perfect setting to dramatise in a low key how precarious is our every effort at constructing a secure foothold in life. I had a friend who lived on a houseboat on Battersea Reach and I remember how every creak and lurch was both a call to adventure and a reminder of one's......more

Goodreads review by Paul on April 17, 2020

Dear Miss Fitzgerald Firstly, I am informed that you died in 2000 at the age of 83, but I feel this should not mean that I am unable to write to you, although I do realise an answer may not be forthcoming as soon as I might wish. I recently finished your novel Offshore. It was a pleasant contrast to t......more

Goodreads review by Sue on November 16, 2017

This was one of those books that slowly crept up on me, caught hold and didn't let go. I grew to care about these people--and, silly me, even about their boats. Everyone and everything in this story is living on the edge--of a relationship, of the land or the water, of reality, of childhood or adult......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on April 05, 2021

"Biologically they could be said, as most tideline creatures are, to be 'successful'. They were not easily dislodged. But to sell your craft, to leave the Reach, was felt to be a desperate step, like those of the amphibians when in earlier stages of the world's history, they took ground. Many of the......more

Quotes

Praise for Penelope Fitzgerald and : ‘An astonishing book. Hardly more than 50,000 words, it is written with a manic economy that makes it seem even shorter, and with a tamped-down force that continually explodes in a series of exactly controlled detonations. is a marvellous achievement: strong, supple, humane, ripe, generous and graceful.’ Bernard Levin, ‘She writes the kind of fiction in which perfection is almost to be hoped for, unostentatious as true virtuosity can make it, its texture a pure pleasure.’ Frank Kermode, ‘Perfectly balanced…the novelistic equivalent of a Turner watercolour.’ ‘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 Faulks ‘This Booker prize winner is a slightly dark, witty novel … The brilliant Fitzgerald takes a subtle squint at thwarted love, loneliness and the human need to be necessary’ Val Hennessy,