Offshore Audiobook By Penelope Fitzgerald, Alan Hollinghurst - introduction cover art

Offshore

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Offshore

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

©1979 Penelope Fitzgerald; Introduction Alan Hollinghurst 2013; Preface Hermione Lee 2013 (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers Limited Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Satire Urban Comedy

Critic reviews

‘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
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A beautifully written prize winning book unfortunately ruined by an abominable narration. Shame on you Audible.

Offshore

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“Offshore” presents a group of charming misfits who live on houseboats in a fading section of London in the early 1960s. The novel follows their romantic entanglements, frustrated ambitions and (like their boats) efforts to stay afloat.

The novel was well-written, although it sometimes drifted too far into the whimsical. I was not amused by two precocious sisters, ages 6 and 12, who are a little too brave, perceptive and well-spoken. But overall, this provides a brisk, entertaining listen. The narrator was strong on his characters’ voices, if sometimes a little overenthusiastic.

Bohos on the Thames

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After meeting all these characters, I didn’t want to leave them. A story that will stay with me.

Wanted the story to keep going

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I wasn’t sure what the point of this story is. The character development was weak.

Hard to follow and get into

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Too difficult a read for an American in the 2020s. Had to spend half my time in a dictionary or on Google to understand words and phrases.

Terrible ending.

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I'm not sure why this is an award winner. I found it incredibly boring and pointless. The narration is atrocious, the narrator is overly excited in his delivery, and his voices for young girls sound more mature than their mother's voice. The experience would likely be better with a different narrator, but it would ultimately still be a boring, pointless story.

S.O.S

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Well-written, interesting characters, and a great setting. So much potential that just never really went anywhere. I got bored, stopped paying attention and had to re-listen to chapters.

A well-written story, that goes nowhere

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