Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore is deft, ironic, original and enjoyable, but it is hard to see how it came to win the Booker Prize. It is in no sense a 'big' book nor is it intended to be, and those who buy it because it won a major award will, one imagines, be disappointed by the modesty of the writer's ambitions…. Offshore vividly catches the life of Thames river-dwellers who retain their self respect by seeing themselves as voluntary exiles, members of the same club. (p. 92)

The plot isn't very important, even though one man is nearly murdered and drownings occur, but the book ends with disappointing abruptness when the male tart's barge, laden with stolen electric guitars, hair driers, transistors ('The strange currency of the 1960s') heaves itself away from its ancient anchor and sets off unwillingly, crewed by Nenna's runaway husband…. Where will they end up? Wormwood...