Offshore

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I do however find it fascinating each year when the Booker long list and short list are announced - what has made it on, how are these things chosen?

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. It vividly conjures the vicissitudes of the sights and sounds of the water and weather, aided by a splattering of boaty jargon. It's the Thames standing in for the River Lethe, whose waters wiped the pasts of ancient Greek souls before they wandered beyond it into the Limbo of Asphodel.By the end of this thankfully short book, I was no wiser about any of the characters' struggles, although there were a few weak attempts to show their isolation and outcast status in society. She isn’t meant to be the main character, but for me the only parts of the book that had life were the ones she was central to. John Wilson is a lifelong enthusiast for London the city and for London in literature, art and film. Edward’s character is displayed as mean in every sense, until finally he shouts at Nenna '“you’re not a woman! The storm is described with telling detail, in the streets and on the river – police boats and tugs warning the boat dwellers.

Richard, aboard his converted minesweeper Lord Jim, is looked up to as the unofficial leader of the community, both by temperament and by virtue of his past role with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. 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. I am a quote marker, and I found that I had read this book and marked only two passages, and neither of them was striking.Even the girls have male preoccupations (Elvis, for example) yet, Fitzgerald finally refuses to let men dominate. This vital ability may be the feminine counterpart to Nenna's claimed deficiencies-of-gender, such as being unable to fold a map. Described by the Guardian as, ‘one the most distinctive and elegant voices in contemporary British fiction’, Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the twentieth-century’s most acclaimed British novelists. Willis, a naval artist who has never been to sea, is hoping to sell his boat The Dreadnought before she inevitably sinks. Even at the end of this short novel, like the water of an approaching storm, these lovable people of the water are unsettled.