Offshore

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Meanwhile, Laura's wealthy sister is over from Canada, and wants to take her and the girls to start a new life there. i hate when i don't finish a book, but halfway through the book i found myself still not caring about anyone in the book. The storyline was to my mind disjointed, and whole chunks of the narrative seemed to be put in just to display the author’s knowledge of boats/ Thames barge houseboats. But Martha, small and thin, with dark eyes which already showed an acceptance of the world’s shortcomings, was not like her mother and even less like her father. The river's most elusive hours, when darkness lifts off darkness, and from one minute to another the shadows declare themselves as houses or craft at anchor.

Even at the end of this short novel, like the water of an approaching storm, these lovable people of the water are unsettled. Instead of the foreseen happy, romantic ending, Nenna and the girls, under the direction of her sister, plan to set out for a new life in Canada, unhusbanded, and this time brother-in-law Joel's offer to teach her to fold a map has a jangle about it of unwanted intrusion, even mansplaining. I can think of a few Goodreads friends who would like it for that reason, too, though these same friends are apt to like it for more than just that. All the more so since I knew that she alone would suffice no matter: for if I finished before the end of the trip, to go back and start again would be a treat.Indeed, a cross between classic chick-lit and Andersonian whimsy might read just like this, if it were written by a genius who had experienced actual poverty. In a 2013 introduction, Alan Hollinghurst noted that Offshore was the novel in which Fitzgerald found her form – her technique and her power.

John Wilson is a lifelong enthusiast for London the city and for London in literature, art and film. Penelope Fitzgerald drew on her own experience living on an old Thames barge that sank right out from under herself - twice. Frequently during the course of the novel, characters are literally hanging above the river on precarious little boards that cross from one boat to the next.Ultimately the reader, can see quite clearly that neither candidate is remotely compatible with the loopy, combustible, and defiant Nenna. In describing a group of people rather than zooming in on just a few individuals the story loses its impact. This is only the fourth Penelope Fitzgerald novel that I have read, and I have to say straight off – I enjoyed it enormously.

When Nenna finally makes an expedition outside the hinterland of the Boats, it seems she may have been right not to try it before.And like the houseboats in that story, the crafts of her neighbours (which also included a former minesweeper) were linked by a rickety and unsafe series of gangplanks. This is the swinging 60s, but there is not much swinging taking place here; instead, we get to know a few truly memorable characters who try to make the best they can despite the odds being stacked against them. I can’t turn over The Times so that the pages lie flat, I can’t fold up a map in the right creases, I can’t draw corks, I can’t drive in nails straight, I can’t.