Alas,
this is the first Booker prize winner at which I shake my head and say, wow,
must have been a dry year.
Offshore is about a
motley crew of folks who live in barges on the Thames. The novelette begins
with a meeting on the boat of the most disciplined of these river rats, at
which he calls all the boatowners by their vessels’ names:
“Are we to gather that Dreadnought
is asking us all to do something dishonest?” Richard asked.
Dreadnought nodded, glad
to have been understood so easily.
After
that bit of surreal humor, it’s pretty much downhill from there. There’s a
gigolo whose boat is being used as a sort of Ali Baba’s cavern. A single mom
and her two daughters. An unhappy couple. An elderly artist trying to sell his
leaky tub (the Dreadnought). And the
most domestic couple, who end up taking in most of the others, including the
pregnant cat, but whom we hardly get to know at all.
The
best part of this bewilderingly short narrative is the girls, who know their
bit of river and its tidal tables like the backs of their grimy hands. But the
lovely vignette about their discovery of some antique tiles peters out into
nothing, like Offshore’s narrative.
It’s all wet.
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