Booker Prize Winners (1979)
Penelope Fitzgerald, though she did not publish her first novel until
she was sixty, had, by the time she died this year, become one of England's
most awarded and revered authors. Critics describe her as a miniaturist,
by which they apparently mean that her novels are small sketches of particular
aspects of life. Offshore, for which she won her first Booker Prize,
is a good example of this form. Based in part on her time spent living
on a barge in the Thames, the novel tells the story of a brief period in
the lives of a group of eccentrics who live aboard ship in Battersea Reach
on the Thames. Actually, it only barely tells a story, it is more
an exercise in establishing characters and a setting than anything else.
In order for this to work, you either have to have fascinating characters
or a spellbinding setting, she has neither. At first, as you're reading,
she seems about to update Our Mutual Friend (see Orrin's
review), with it's central theme of people, on the margins of society,
living on and off of London's great waterway. But where Dickens creates
unforgettable characters and plops them down in a labyrinthine plot, these
characters are only mildly amusing and there's virtually no plot.
The other author who sprang to mind is Joseph Mitchell, the great New Yorker
essayist whose works are collected in Up In The Old Hotel.
He was a master at crafting portraits that were small masterpieces around
the bums and lunatics of New York City, but there are no Joe Goulds in
Offshore.
This is a quick enough read (my copy is just 141 pages) and there's
a periodic chuckle, but I found it difficult to care about the characters
and am mystified by the book's reputation. One of the obituaries
below refers to Ms Fitzgerald's "remarkable sensitivities." I am
perfectly willing to concede that I am a man of severely limited sensitivities
and so the fault for my not enjoying the book may well lie with me.
(Reviewed:29-Aug-00)
Grade: (C-)
Websites:
Book-related and General Links:
-ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA : Your search: "penelope fitzgerald"
-BIO:
Penelope Fitzgerald (xrefer)
-OBIT:
Late-starting author whose novels displayed her remarkable sensitivities
and range of erudition (May 3, 2000, Times of London)
-OBIT:
Penelope Fitzgerald dies at 83 : The award-winning author of "The Blue
Flower" published her first book in 1975. (Salon)
-OBIT:
Austen's literal air dies (THE DAILY TELEGRAPH)
-OBIT:
Lauded British author Penelope Fitzgerald dies (May 3, 2000, KRISTIN
GAZLAY, Chicago Sun-Times)
-About
Penelope Fitzgerald (Houghton Mifflin)
-FEATURED
AUTHOR: Penelope Fitzgerald (NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
Notes from a Small Island : on The Country of the Pointed Firs by
Sarah Orne Jewett (Penelope Fitzgerald, Amazon.com)
-BOOK
LIST : "This is it!" : The author of "The Blue Flower" picks
five novels that rocked her world. (Penelope Fitzgerald, Salon)
-REVIEW:
of THE INVENTION OF TRUTH By Marta Morazzoni (Penelope Fitzgerald,
NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of FORD MADOX FORD By Alan Judd (Penelope Fitzgerald, NY Times Book
Review)
-REVIEW:
of C. S. LEWIS A Biography. By A. N. Wilson (Penelope Fitzgerald, NY
Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE PILGRIM'S RULES OF ETIQUETTE By Taghi Modarressi (Penelope
Fitzgerald, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of COLERIDGE Darker Reflections, 1804-1834. By Richard Holmes (Penelope
Fitzgerald, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE ULTIMATE INTIMACY By Ivan Klima (Penelope Fitzgerald,
NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE MAD DOG Stories. By Heinrich Boll (Penelope Fitzgerald, NY Times
Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of REALITY AND DREAMS By Muriel Spark (Penelope Fitzgerald, NY Times
Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of BLAKE By Peter Ackroyd (Penelope Fitzgerald, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of LONDON By John Russell (Penelope Fitzgerald, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE FOLLOWING STORY By Cees Nooteboom (Penelope Fitzgerald, NY Times
Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of EXCURSIONS IN THE REAL WORLD Memoirs. By William Trevor (Penelope
Fitzgerald, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON By Simon Leys (Penelope Fitzgerald, NY Times
Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of EVELYN WAUGH The Later Years 1939-1966. By Martin Stannard (Penelope
Fitzgerald, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of ANTONIA WHITE Diaries 1926-1957: Volume One. Edited by Susan Chitty
(Penelope Fitzgerald, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE KELMSCOTT PRESS A History of William Morris's Typographical
Adventure. By William S. Peterson (Penelope Fitzgerald, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE MEMOIR OF MARCO PARENTI A Life in Medici Florence. By Mark Phillip
(Penelope Fitzgerald, NY Times Book Review)
-INTERVIEW:
The Bloom Is On the Penelope Fitzgerald (Nicholas A. Basbanes, Lit
Kit)
-INTERVIEW:
High Spirits : The great Penelope Fitzgerald on poltergeists, plots,
and past masters (Amazon.com)
-INTERVIEW:
Of prizes, men and red-hot pokers : At 82, Penelope Fitzgerald is the
first non-American to win a United States national critics' prize. She
spoke to Peter Lennon (ZA Books)
-ARCHIVES:
"penelope fitzgerald" (NY Review of Books)
-Celebrating
Penelope Fitzgerald (Raised Roof)
-ESSAY
: Shelved Dreams in Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop (Pamela St.
Clair, Suite 101.com)
-ESSAY:
The Shock of the Old Penelope Fitzgerald and the Art of Surprise
(Ariel Swartley, LA Weekly)
-REVIEW:
of Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald ( Barbara Fisher Williamson, NY
Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald (Kerry Reid, Amazon.com)
-REVIEW
: of THE KNOX BROTHERS By Penelope Fitzgerald & THE MEANS OF ESCAPE:
Stories By Penelope Fitzgerald (Michael Dirda, Washington Post)
-REVIEW:
of The Blue Flower (Michael Hofmann, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
Richard Holmes: Paradise in a Dream , NY Review of Books
The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
-REVIEW:
of THE BLUE FLOWER by Penelope Fitzgerald (Fin Keegan, Second
Circle)
-REVIEW:
Gabriele Annan: Letting Go, NY Review of Books
Elementals: Stories of Fire and
Ice by A.S. Byatt
Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald
-REVIEW:
of Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald (Kristin Soprony, History Net)
-REVIEW:
of Human Voices (SYLVIA BROWNRIGG , Salon)
-REVIEW:
of The Golden Child by Penelope Fitzgerald (Harriet Klausner, Book
Browser)
-REVIEW:
of The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (Robert Weibezahl, Book Page)
-ANNOTATED
REVIEW: of Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald (Coulehan, Jack, Medical
Humanities)
-REVIEWS:
of Penelope Fitzgerald books (Ray Walker, Guilford, VT)
-BOOK
LIST : What children know : The editor of the Threepenny Review selects
her five favorite novels about childhood. (Wendy Lesser, Salon)
-BOOK
LIST : Other Pasts, Other Places : The author of "Possession" recommends
five unforgettable historical novels. (A.S. BYATT, Salon)
-AWARDS:
Booker Prize for Fiction 1979 : Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald (Booker)
BOOKER:
-Booker
PLC
-ESSAY:
The Super Bowl of Fiction (EVA HOFFMAN, NY Times)
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