Offshore (1979)
Who wrote it?
Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000; active 1975-1995), born Lincoln, England. A self-professed “outsider” at the time of her victory, she had published her first book (a biography of Edward Burne-Jones) aged 58, and surprised the establishment by winning the Booker with this, her third novel.
Following her Booker success, of which more later, she gradually came to be part of that establishment, with several further nominations - including only a year previously for The Bookshop - and a critically acclaimed quartet of historical novels, including The Blue Flower, before her death in 2000.
What's it about
Offshore is a brief novel focusing on the lives of a small group of inhabitants of barges moored at Battersea Reach on the Thames. It focuses primarily on Nenna, a Canadian living on a small barge with her two daughters, obsessed with the idea of her husband returning to her.
While Nenna best represents the novels theme of people caught “on the edge”, living in a kind of liminal space between land and water, its other characters are no less well drawn, representing the diverse boating community - we have everything from businessmen romanticizing the river life, through marine artists, to Maurice, a rent-boy living on a boat called Maurice.
What I liked
I’ve said before that I love economical, concise writing, and this takes that concept to a whole new level. Practically haiku-like in its brevity, it’s over almost before it seems to have begun, yet manages to capture an incredible range of emotions, experiences and possibilities in its short word-count.
Similarly, its characters are all extremely well-drawn with very few words. They all seem to represent a recognisable type and thus hint at lives beyond the page, somehow without seeming like caricatures.
I, like many I suspect, particularly enjoyed the sections focusing on Nenna’s children Martha and Tilda. Beyond precocious, they have a feeling of Victorian “street urchins” about them (the novel is set in the early 1960s, so they feel somewhat out of time). Their adventures, constantly playing truant, mudlarking (of course), dabbling in antique dealing and entertaining a rich Austrian teen, Heinrich, are really the most entertaining parts of the novel.
The evocation of a lost London is wonderful. I live a short run from Battersea Reach, and exploring the locations described here, with no World’s End estate but also an industrial zone now largely replaced by impossibly expensive Chelsea townhouses, is genuinely fascinating. The description of Nenna’s journey to Stoke Newington, as if it were halfway around the world, is similarly brilliant, as is her attempt to walk home, eventually barefoot, before being rescued by a kindly taxi driver.
Building on that, it’s set in the early 60s, and its location outside of the “normal” developments of London (albeit on its periphery, with trendy King’s Road boutiques just a short stumble away) means that it occasionally feels like an even older version of the capital. As such, the perspective from an already changed late-70s city is interesting in and of itself.
What I didn't like
Having read a lot about the background to Fitzgerald’s win (see below), I picked this up determined to love it. Almost to the point that I had over-invested in it before starting. When I was actually in the process of reading, I occasionally found myself a little underwhelmed and almost as surprised as some others that this slight and ostensibly inconsequential work had managed to pick up such a major prize. Ultimately, I still perhaps wasn’t able to love it quite as much as I’d wanted to, but it is a book that needs to be seen as a whole - it reveals itself more in the reflecting than the reading, I think.
Food & drink pairings
Something warming for the cold nights on the boat - high strength spirits, typically.
A lingering espresso in a hip 60’s café on the King’s Road.
Fun facts
The novel is based somewhat closely on Fitzgerald’s own experiences living on a barge at Battersea Reach, with her two daughters. Like the Dreadnought in the book, it sank, destroying much of her work at the time in the process. She described this as the lowest period of her life. Her first three novels were all largely autobiographical, before she moved onto the historical novels that characterised her later career.
Offshore’s win was unexpected, and greeted with what some described as shock and others as “spite”. Its win was described by the judges as a compromise decision - “everyone’s second choice” in the face of disagreements, largely over whether V. S. Naipaul’s documentarian A Bend in the River should be considered a novel (seemingly not an issue when they gave his odds-and-sods collection In a Free State the prize a few years earlier.) Fitzgerald was extremely uncomfortable with all the fuss and the reaction to her win was apparently an ongoing source of “humiliation” for her.
Her tendency to be brutally economical came from her experience with her first novel, when her editor asked her to cut the wordcount by half. She subsequently applied the same criteria to everything she wrote.
Vanquished Foes
Thomas Keneally (Confederates)
V. S. Naipaul (A Bend in the River)
Julian Rathbone (Joseph)
Fay Weldon (Praxis)
Any of these worth a look?
Context
In 1979 :
Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain's first Female PM
First direct elections to the European Parliament
Killing of Lord Mountbatten by the provisional IRA
One-child policy introduced in China
Iranian Revolution; overthrown of the Shah and beginning of Islamic Republic
End of Cambodian-Vietnamese War; fall of Pol Pot
Saint Lucia, St Vincent & the Grenadines and Kiribati (FKA Gilbert Islands) gain independence from the UK
Sony Walkman goes on sale for the first time in Japan
McDonalds introduces the Happy Meal
Former Sex Pistol Sid Vicious dies after a heroin overdose
Dominance of Disco (and racist reaction including the "Disco Demolition Night" in Chicago)
Michael Jackson, Off The Wall
The Sugarhill Gang, "Rapper's Delight"
Monty Python's Life of Brian
Alien
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Life Lessons
Living on a boat probably isn’t as romantic as it sounds
Mudlarking can be profitable as well as sounding like a lot of fun
Cut your wordcount by half, whatever it is you’re writing.
Score
7.5
Stark and beautiful in its (brief) totality, it was a little too hard to grab onto as a reading experience to score it any higher. Still an extremely worthwhile read though.
Ranking to date:
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch (1978) - 9
Troubles - J.G. Farrell (1970, "Lost Booker") - 8.5
Saville - David Storey (1976) - 8
The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell (1973) - 8
Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald (1979) - 7.5
The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens (1970) - 7
The Conservationist - Nadine Gordimer (1974) - 7
Holiday - Stanley Middleton (1974) - 7 .
Heat & Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) - 6.5
In a Free State* - V.S. Naipaul (1971) - 6.5
G. - John Berger (1972) - 6
Something to Answer For - P. H. Newby (1969) - 5.5
Staying On - Paul Scott (1977) - 5
*Read in later condensed edition.
Next up
From Murdoch’s coastal shenanigans and Fitzgerald’s liminal barges, we finally head off onto the high seas with William Golding’s nineteenth-century tale of an epic oceanic voyage, Rites of Passage.
I’m anticipating a 2 week break before kicking off the 80s winners with Golding - before that I’m planning a little round-up of what I’ve learned from reading the first 10 or so years of Booker winners. Stay tuned!
