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Offshore

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Offshore

By: Penelope Fitzgerald, Alan Hollinghurst - introduction
Narrated by: Jot Davies, Stephanie Racine
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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

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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
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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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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Fitzgerald needs no praise from me. What an incredible novel. But who possessed the editors to allow this gasping ingenu to mince his way through it, rocking and lilting as if he's the barge itself, rising on the incoming tide.

Fabulous book, strangely affected reading

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How did the narrator detract from the book?

He renders the characters' voices well (even when faced with a Canadian accent), but I found his tone when reading the narrative sing-song and infantilising, like he was reading me Winnie the Pooh. Quite unsuitable for a bleak, grown-up novel like this one.

Any additional comments?

Not Fitzgerald's best, but a strong book – compressed, allusive, subtle and often funny, much like her others. The voice of Alan Hollinghurst's baritone reading his insightful Introduction to the reissue is a treat and almost worth the price of the audiobook.

Adequate reading

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