Offshore (novel)
Offshore (1979) is a novel by Penelope Fitzgerald. It won the Booker Prize for that year. It recalls her time spent on boats on the Thames in Battersea. The novel explores the liminality of people who do not belong to the land or the sea, but are somewhere in between. The epigraph, "che mena il vento, e che batte la pioggia, e che s'incontran con si aspre lingue" ("whom the wind drives, or whom the rain beats, or those who clash with such bitter tongues") comes from Canto XI of Dante's Inferno.
List of Characters and Their Boats (in order)
Lord Jim
Richard Blake, husband, aged 39
Laura Blake, wife, also known as Lollie
Maurice
Maurice
Harry, Maurice's acquaintance, who uses the boat for his own purposes but does not live on board
Grace
Nenna James, mother
Martha James, Nenna's teenage daughter.
Tilda (Matilda) James, Nenna's younger daughter, who is six years old
Edward James, estranged father and husband, who visits the boat only once
Stripey (the cat)
Dreadnought
Willis, painter, widower, 65 years old
