Rating: 
Summary: Concise, Deft, and Masterly
Review: The brevity of this novel has prompted complaints and some disparagement as a mere sketchbook. I disagree. I think Fitzgerald writes with admirable concision. The characters are deftly drawn, the story took some surprising (for me) turns, and the language was precise and evocative. The ending, which also surprised me, has stayed with me. Well done, and well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Less than the sum of its parts
Review: The characters are well sketched, the milieu is portrayed with detail, and the prose is sharp and economical. Some parts stick with me (the children scavenging the riverbed at low tide for small treasures from shipwrecks, or the irrational attachment the owners feel for their houseboats). Given the strong evocation of an era and a milieu, given the characters brought to life, and given the clever interaction between the characters, it is amazing to me that this book adds up to so little.It is sad that Penelope Fitzgerald is so talented at setting the scenes, but does so little with them; it is as if she delights (and excels) in assembling the ingredients but stops short of using them to produce a great novel. Fitzgerald is not among my desert island authors, which includes Nabokov, Calvino and Maugham.
Rating:
Summary: A haiku of a novel
Review: The first from a writer who believes less is more. Her work does more with the nuance of a sentence than most writers accomplish in a chapter. A review below complains that she's no A. S. Byatt, and it's true. If you like a lot of exposition and dense writing, this is not for you. But the beautifully described world of the waterfront, and the wafting lives that intersect there made this an enduring work in my imagination.
Rating: 
Summary: This should have been one Booker Award amongst many
Review: The novels have all been read, but the stories continue. This was the last of Ms. Fitzgerald's novels that I had yet to read, and was also the only work of hers than won the prestigious Booker Award. Her other works that were short listed for the award were "The Bookshop", "The Gate Of Angels", and "The Beginning Of Spring". In a writing career that produced 9 works of fiction, to have placed 4 of the 9 as finalists, and to win once is extraordinary. These novels, 3 works of non-fiction, and a collection of short stories, were all published in a span of time of just 15 years. It is certainly selfish, but I wish she began sharing her work before she was 69, in the end it does not matter, as the body of work she did produce will keep her in print for many lifetimes to come. Ms. Fitzgerald wrote short novels; in "Offshore" she has compressed the story into a space that is at once confining and colorful as her books. The majority of the book takes place on boats, boats that never move. Boats that would normally form there own tiny area of culture, but this is Ms. Fitzgerald, so as is normally the case conventional measurement has nothing to do with the scope of the story. This time out she seems to test just how far she can compress the space, the number of people and their stories. This sometimes-floating living location is a raving contradiction in space. Boats and barges meant to be mobile are not, nature can use the tide of the Thames to raise and then settle them down once again, but any motion more abrupt and the small fragile world is put in peril. A motionless boat is a contradiction in terms. A boat is inanimate, but "it" knows that being chained in place is unnatural, or perhaps all the life that clings to the sides of these vessels are nature's disaffected elements, determined to find a way to undo what should not have been done. "I never do anything deliberately" is spoken by one character, but is appropriate for several. This group of eclectic eccentrics may possibly be the greatest menagerie the writer ever conjured for one tale. I cannot begin to pick a favorite from her novels; she is as excellent as she is consistent. I do know this, that unlike her characters, Ms. Fitzgerald chose every word deliberately, built every sentence with her exactitude, and delivered works that are absolutely complete. The Booker Judges deemed this work "flawless", they were correct.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written, less novel than literary sketchbook
Review: Well written novels are often a chore to read; many authors seem determined to prove that they can write, and produce mounds of lovely prose which has to be shoveled aside like so much heavy snow to get purchase on the story underneath. Not so with Penelope Fitzgerald. "Offshore" is a masterpiece of brevity. The quirky tale of a collection of misfits living on houseboats in 60's London, the book is something of a literary sketchbook, each character drawn with a few deft strokes. There is Willis, for example: "[H]is moral standards were much the same as Richard's; only he did not feel he was well enough off to apply them as often, and in such a wide range of conditions..." Then there is Tilda: "She was known to be one of the little ones who had filled in their colouring books irreverently, making our Lord's beard purple, or even green, largely, to be sure, because she never bothered to get hold of the best crayons first." All of this is a delight to read. My only complaint is the somewhat framentary nature of the narrative; all the parts are well made, but they don't make a particularly coherent whole. Definitely a book worth reading, though.
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