Offshore

Winner of the Booker PrizeOn 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. Belonging to neither land nor sea they cling to one another in a motley yet kindly society. There is Maurice by occupation a male prostitute by happenstance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard a buttoned-up ex-navy man whose boat dominates the Reach. Then there is Nenna a faithful but abandoned wife the diffident mother of two young girls running wild on the waterfront streets.It is Nenna&;s domestic predicament that as it deepens draws the relations among this scrubby community together into ever more complex and comic patterns. The result is one of Fitzgerald&;s greatest triumphs a novel the Booker judges deemed &;flawless.&;&;A marvelous achievement: strong supple humane ripe generous and graceful.&; &;Sunday Times