Offshore

Penelope Fitzgerald is best known for her family biography THE KNOX BROTHERS, which had the rare distinction of winning unanimous praise from the critics and pleasing a wide readership. Last year her first novel THE BOOKSHOP was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Reviewing it on BBC Critics Forum, Richard Mayne said that what struck him most was 'the wonderful precision, economy and certainty of the writer. It was as if she knew exactly what she was going to do — precisely what word was going to be there and she has a kind of moral steadfastness about her which I loved.'

Her new novel is set in the 1960s, among the houseboat community who rise and fall with the tide on Battersea Reach. Living between land and water, they feel as if they belong to neither. Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, is the sympathetic friend to whom all the others turn. Henna loves her husband but can't get him back; her children run wild on the muddy foreshore and in the not altogether savoury streets that fringe the river. She feels drawn to Richard, the correct ex-RNVR city man whose converted minesweeper dominates the Reach. Richard can make things work. Is he sexually attractive because he can fold maps the right way? The novel puts this question, and other ones about truth and kindness.

In a plot that skilfully entwines one character with another in the natural development of their individual predicaments the story gathers force and impetus, achieving a climax that shows Penelope Fitzgerald as much a master of the novelist's as of the biographer's art. This book is fanny and serious, tender and harsh, in the true tradition of the English novel. In authenticity of setting, M observation of character, In the wit and accomplishment of the writing it is a constant delight.