Fitzgerald actually caused me to develop feelings for these people, as lost and misbegotten as some were. 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. To access your ebook(s) after purchasing, you can download the free Glose app or read instantly on your browser by logging into Glose. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Since Fitzgerald lived there the boats are no longer restricted to flushing their toilets on a falling tide, and residents and visitors no longer need to clamber from one boat to another.

Most are Thames barges, and there are several rather romantic references to their former lives sailing down the river and along the east coast, both in the author’s own voice and in Tilda’s daydream. I can think of a few Goodreads friends who would like it for that reason, too, though these same friends are apt to like it for more than just that. Yes, there is,’ Martha replied, with a firmness which she could hardly have inherited either from her father or her mother, ‘but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go and look at things. At six, Tilly, seems far too articulate and knowing, but I later concluded that, with her own highly educated and perhaps somewhat unorthodox and rarified background, Penelope Fitzgerald may indeed have known or even produced children as precocious as this. 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.

The tidal flow of the river, the rise and fall of the boats, the mud along the river bank – the interactions of her characters come together to create a wonderful sense of time and place. Some of us turn up in each other's feed only briefly, others hang out for longer, maybe chat over coffee or a drink. For example, the effect of the rising tide: "On every barge on the Reach a very faint ominous tap, no louder than the door of a cupboard shutting, would be followed by louder ones from every strake, timber and weatherboard, a fusillade of thunderous creaking, and even groans that seemed human. Meanwhile Nenna’s decisive and wealthy sister Louise has arrived from Canada to take charge of Nenna’s life, as she considers Nenna has shown herself incapable of doing so. She "had the air of something aquatic, a demon from the depths", and "respected the water and knew that one could die within sight of the Embankment".

One of the boats is a Dutch barge belong to Maurice, who renamed his boat “Maurice” as soon as he learnt that he would be addressed by his boat’s name. In Richard’s absence Nenna is unable to oppose Louise’s plan to take her and Tilda and Martha back to Halifax, where Louise has their lives planned.Then there is Nenna, a faithful but abandoned wife, the diffident mother of two young girls running wild on the waterfront streets. You might say the swinging began around 1964/5 with the advent of the Mods but as far as I know the term was first used by Time Magazine in April 1966. Seeing him distressed, she says '“I wish I knew the exact time”', which is a cue for Richard to show off his chronometers. I like the way Penelope Fitzgerald draws people, as well as the kind of people she has chosen to draw—outsiders, those who are down and out. What I dislike about Davies’ narration is that he chants; the lines are read with a rhythmic beat that I find unnatural.

Of course Fitgerald is bashing the whole concept of "the right someone" along with a slew of other conventions on: child rearing, marriage, status living, material acquisition, gender delineation, ageism, homophobia, Catholic dogma - quite a lot for a slim volume of only 141 pages, which I read in just two sittings. This vital ability may be the feminine counterpart to Nenna's claimed deficiencies-of-gender, such as being unable to fold a map. She also lived on a houseboat in Battersea, on a barge floating on the Thames, on a barge that sunk not once but twice. Those experiences--including the sinking of their boat--served as the inspiration for Offshore: A Novel, a short spare novel that won the Booker Prize in 1979.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. Une touche très légère et une extrême subtilité pour faire sentir l'essentiel à travers les petites choses et les petites conversations de la vie.

She was educated at Wycombe Abbey and Somerville College, Oxford university, from which she graduated in 1938 with a congratulatory First. He ekes out a precarious living as a male prostitute, bringing back men most evenings from the nearby pub, and allowing his boat to be used for the storage of stolen goods by his shadowy acquaintance, Harry. It wasn't clear to me until later in the book that this book was likely set in the late 1960s, which also made the seeming squalor on the river all the more real. Edward’s character is displayed as mean in every sense, until finally he shouts at Nenna '“you’re not a woman!In describing a group of people rather than zooming in on just a few individuals the story loses its impact. Offshore, the 1997 Booker Prize winner, is set in the 60's, the perfect time period for these water dwellers who are quietly defying conventional life off the shore of the hip area of Chelsea. Hilary Spurling, one of the judges, later said that the panel was unable to decide between A Bend in the River and Darkness Visible, settling on Offshore as a compromise.