Offshore

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Hermione Lee’s recent biography Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life provides a wealth of background and insight into the book. As a first-time reader, I must admit to feeling lost about the fuss, even with the benefit of a glowing new introduction by fellow Booker alumni Alan Hollinghurst. Meanwhile, Laura's wealthy sister is over from Canada, and wants to take her and the girls to start a new life there. Was there not, on the whole of Battersea Reach, a couple, married or unmarried, living together in the ordinary way?

Most are Thames barges, and there are several rather romantic references to their former lives sailing down the river and along the east coast, both in the author’s own voice and in Tilda’s daydream.

In describing a group of people rather than zooming in on just a few individuals the story loses its impact. The book was inspired by the most difficult years of Fitzgerald's own life, years that she had spent living on an old Thames sailing barge named Grace on Battersea Reach.

Fitzgerald’s teetering outcasts find it impossible despite their best efforts; they're constantly making half-assed plans to rejoin society, but they've ended up here for a reason. 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. Sometimes it leads to an impulsive decision (which I may or may not regret), other times I try to pass the decision to someone else, or just avoid making it altogether. On seeing Fitzgerald being ‘down in the dumps’, he took her out for a day of fun and frivolity; only a few days later, he walked into the sea and drowned himself.

Her marriage was fragile, and her husband was an alcoholic lawyer who was disbarred for forgery, while they were living on the houseboat. When Nenna finally reaches the house no-one answers the bell, but she is eventually let in by a man who turns up and who she learns is Gordon, a friend of Edward whom she had apparently met but has forgotten.