Offshore cover art

Offshore

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Offshore

By: Penelope Fitzgerald, Stephanie Racine, Alan Hollinghurst - introduction
Narrated by: Jot Davies, Alan Hollinghurst
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Penelope Fitzgerald's Booker Prize-winning novel of loneliness and connecting is set among the houseboat community of the Thames and has a new introduction from Alan Hollinghurst.

On Battersea Reach, a mixed bag of the temporarily lost and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the tide of the Thames.

There is good-natured Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, by chance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard, an ex-navy man whose boat, much like its owner, dominates the Reach. 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.

©1979 Penelope Fitzgerald; Introduction Alan Hollinghurst 2013; Preface Hermione Lee 2013 (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers Limited Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Satire Urban Transportation Comedy City

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Bookshop cover art

Critic reviews

"An astonishing book.... Offshore is a marvellous achievement: strong, supple, humane, ripe, generous and graceful." (Bernard Levin, Sunday Times)
"Perfectly balanced...the novelistic equivalent of a Turner watercolour." ( Washington Post)
"This Booker prize winner is a slightly dark, witty novel.... The brilliant Fitzgerald takes a subtle squint at thwarted love, loneliness and the human need to be necessary." (Val Hennessy, Daily Mail)
Most relevant  
this book is well known and has very good reviews but for me it was disappointing. I found it rather uneventful. I think maybe it's just not my thing.

uneventful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I wish I’d read what other reviewers had said about the narrator. They were right. I’m not sure if the book is a good one, because it was read in such a bizarre way.

Poor narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Found this difficult to get into with characters arriving too quickly and confusingly named after their boats. Didnt care for the narration. Hollinghurst had a strange didactic way of speaking that grated on me. Story did grow on me and humour and pathos wonderfully mixed.

Not Fitzgeralds best

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I would have expected a polished style of narration, for this book, a voice full of character and gravitas, given that this novel won the Booker Prize. Sadly the narration, for me, sadly let down the great quality of writing.
The cast of characters in this wonderful story was varied and the narrative drew me into a world of outsiders living a bohemian life on Thames barges. It's a charming, poignant tale which has moments of humour and real sadness.
Overall, a little disappointing. A different voice and style of narration could have made it great.

An accomplished story, spoiled by the narration.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is a beautiful story but it is read like the Saturday afternoon football results on match of the day.

Great book, not so great narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fitzgerald needs no praise from me. What an incredible novel. But who possessed the editors to allow this gasping ingenu to mince his way through it, rocking and lilting as if he's the barge itself, rising on the incoming tide.

Fabulous book, strangely affected reading

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great storytelling. A light touch, beautiful dialogue.
Narration odd- rather too buoyant and every other word slightly emphasized- but it does not spoil the performance.

Quirky & compelling

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
One of the great authors. Sadly, the forced, repetitive intonation of the reader's performance of this Audible version makes it impossible to listen. Such a shame to ruin this important novel.

Wonderful writing appallingly read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

He renders the characters' voices well (even when faced with a Canadian accent), but I found his tone when reading the narrative sing-song and infantilising, like he was reading me Winnie the Pooh. Quite unsuitable for a bleak, grown-up novel like this one.

Any additional comments?

Not Fitzgerald's best, but a strong book – compressed, allusive, subtle and often funny, much like her others. The voice of Alan Hollinghurst's baritone reading his insightful Introduction to the reissue is a treat and almost worth the price of the audiobook.

Adequate reading

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The dreadful narration of this one stopped me from finishing it! Too annoying by far!

Awful narration! Spoiled the story.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews