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Offshore

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About this listen

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.

 Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Satire Urban Comedy

Critic reviews

Praise for Penelope Fitzgerald and Offshore:

‘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. Offshore is a marvellous achievement: strong, supple, humane, ripe, generous and graceful.’ Bernard Levin, Sunday Times

‘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, London Review of Books

‘Perfectly balanced…the novelistic equivalent of a Turner watercolour.’ Washington Post

‘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, Daily Mail

All stars
Most relevant
One of the great authors. Sadly, the forced, repetitive intonation of the reader's performance of this Audible version makes it impossible to listen. Such a shame to ruin this important novel.

Wonderful writing appallingly read

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this book is well known and has very good reviews but for me it was disappointing. I found it rather uneventful. I think maybe it's just not my thing.

uneventful

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I wish I’d read what other reviewers had said about the narrator. They were right. I’m not sure if the book is a good one, because it was read in such a bizarre way.

Poor narration

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The story is set next to the river Thames in the 1960s, with a group of people who live on barges moored alongside the banks. It evokes a now distant time with very interesting details. Unfortunately, the narration is absolutely awful. It almost sounds like an electronically generated voice it is so bad. The introduction and preface are both informative.

Nice story; awful narration

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This is a beautiful story but it is read like the Saturday afternoon football results on match of the day.

Great book, not so great narrator

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