She had a lot of wild experiences to draw on; she was one of those late starters, producing most of her cultish novels as an aging widow. However, by the time I finally stepped away from the little Thames community, I could see that it all linked in its own way and there were few loose ends. At the end the little community is broken up, with two boats for sale, one sunk, and Maurice swept away in a storm to an undisclosed fate.

Some, maybe all of the characters were fragmentary, but the focus is on Nenna and her two daughters. Nenna takes her children to land for the duration of the storm, and the last we read of them is 'Tilda put on her anorak. Among the others are two financially secure chaps with, or retired from, office jobs who just prefer barge living to houses. The houseboats are permanently moored; their movement is limited to bobbing up and down on the tide. The effect is maintained by using correct nautical terms, for example the tide is “making” rather than just coming in.

The next day Richard is attacked by Harry and so badly injured he needs emergency surgery to save his life.

When Nenna decides to confront Edward to salvage the marriage or to confront him, the way they quarrel and how Nenna speaks to Edward's landlord, and his mother, both of whom Nenna had just met, totally blew me away, and not in a good way. As I read Offshore, and stumbled over the baggage of Penelope Fitzgerald's crew of barge-dwelling characters, I was thrown off-balance many times. penelope fitzgerald's humour is so dry that you could fry an egg on it whilst the characters are so vivid they will hold your soul forever.Their dwelling is determined by something in their characters: 'They aspired towards the Chelsea shore…. On the Battersea Reach of the Thames, a mixed bag of the slightly disreputable, the temporarily lost, and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the great river’s tides. Another boat is owned by the responsible Richard, married to Laura who wants to move to solid ground. Like other readers, and unaware from my kindle of the brevity of the book, I made the mistake of reading too fast, rather than savour the striking prose and non sequiturs which hit home if you spend a little time on them.

A princess, unknown to all about her, she awaited the moment when these bruises would reveal her heritage. This is the swinging 60s, but there is not much swinging taking place here; instead, we get to know a few truly memorable characters who try to make the best they can despite the odds being stacked against them.The book is the struggle--the pull of the river vs the cry of others on the land to move away from the water; giving up the dream (or dreaming) for the adult world (reality perhaps). Everyone lives between land and water, but each is also caught in some other dichotomy: childhood or adulthood; togetherness or separation; comfort or poverty; in or out of love; life or death; artistry or manual labour; dreams or cold reality.