Nenna James, in Penelope Lively’s Booker Prize-winning Offshore, is displaced in several senses of the word. First of all, she’s a native Canadian living in England. Second, she’s unhappily estranged from her husband, Edward. And finally, after that estrangement, she and their two daughters, Martha and Tilda, find themselves living in a riverboat community, just offshore in London’s River Thames. Her neighbors are also outside the norm: Maurice is a prostitute who helps store stolen items for a friend in his boat, Willis is an elderly painter trying to sell of his boat despite a bad leak, and Woodie is a part-time resident. The unofficial leader of the little group is Richard, who has a military background and an even temper, but also has a wife who very much wants to get a “real” house and leave the river behind. Their lives are all intertwined, each as tenuously moored as their boats.
There’s not really a lot that “happens” here: Nenna tries to reconcile with Edward and resist her sister’s urging to move back to Canada, Willis’s boat finally sinks and he has to move in with Woodie, Richard and Laura quarrel about their living situation. Nenna makes a visit to her husband to try to win him back and when she’s unsuccessful, returns to her houseboat and sleeps with Richard, whose wife has left. Maurice’s thief friend fights with Richard, and the latter’s injuries allow Laura to return and move them both off their houseboat. And at the very end, a violent storm brews up, throwing an already delicate situation into chaos.
This is an extremely character-focused work, with little in the way of narrative tension. I have always preferred books that focus on the former, but even for me this was not really enough plot. It’s a very short book, really more of a novella than a full novel, based in part on Fitzgerald’s own prior experience of living in a houseboat community on the Thames when she had fallen on difficult times, which is likely what drives her enormous sympathy for her characters. They are rendered with great sensitivity, their very real flaws never overriding their fundamental decency. The situations she puts them in are realistic and their reactions, too, have strong emotional veracity. Fitzgerald is clearly a very talented writer in this respect.
That being said, this didn’t make much of an impression on me. I was surprised that it won the Booker, a major literary prize, and finding out that it was seen as a middle ground compromise choice between two other books made sense. It’s more contained-feeling than an award-winner tends to be, without much in the way of the kind of ambition in scope or themes that one might expect. It’s a small book taking a look at small, often marginalized lives. While I did very much enjoy the character work on display here and it’s quick, pleasant, and worth reading, don’t expect anything particularly special or memorable.