Tag Archives: Booker Prize winner

Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

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Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald was first published in 1979 and this book won the Booker prize that year. I’m often puzzled by the books that win prizes and that’s the way I feel about this book, but I must say that I haven’t read any of the books which were short-listed for the prize that year. Suffice to say that I wasn’t too impressed by this one, it isn’t terrible but it’s just nothing earth-shattering, or even that entertaining. I’m left wondering if it was the slimness of the volume at just 140 pages which endeared it to the judges!

Offshore is set in the 1960s in a community of houseboat dwellers, berthed on the tidal  River Thames at Battersea Reach. They’re an eclectic bunch of people who all share a love for the boats they are in, despite most of them being in a poor state of repair. The boats are all close together, some linked by gangplanks to the one next to them. The boat owners go by the name of their boats.

Nenna is a young mother of two daughters, the father has left them, but Nenna expects him to come back – sometime. Nenna is lax about her daughters, she’s often in trouble because she’s happy for the girls not to attend school, but the nuns and priest definitely aren’t. Nenna had bought their boat Grace with all the money that they had while her husband was working abroad, and she had given him the impression that she had bought a substantial house at a good London address.

Maurice is always up for a party, but he has a sinister ‘friend’ who uses his boat to hide stolen goods in it. Harry is obviously a ‘baddie’ but he has a hold over Maurice, because Maurice is a male prostitute, and Harry could get him imprisoned at any time just by calling the police.

Dreadnought is up for sale, but is about to sink at any moment. There are a few others, all with their own problems. The most engaging characters are Nenna’s young daughters Martha and Tilda who have more maturity and sense than both their parents, and have a lucrative if dangerous hobby of recovering goodies from ancient boats which had sunk years before with cargoes such as de Morgan tiles in their holds.

The ending is not conclusive, it depends on how optimistic the reader is I suppose. I found it dissatisfying.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

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Shuggie Bain cover

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart won the 2020 Booker Prize and at the time I seem to remember that there were a lot of people who were very surprised, complaining that it was difficult to read the Scots/Glaswegian dialect, but really there’s very little in it.

The setting is Glasgow where Agnes Bain has walked out on her husband and taken her three children with her. She goes off with a taxi driver called Hugh Bain, he’s more exciting than her husband it would seem, but neither of them have planned things, and Hugh has walked out on his wife and four chidren. With nowhere to live they end up moving in with Agnes’s parents. Life isn’t at all as Agnes had imagined it to be and she has developed a serious alcohol problem.

Unsurprisingly Hugh has turned out to be a terrible philandering husband. When Agnes has a melt down they have to move out of her parent’s home and Hugh rents a flat in a remote pit village, but of course the pit is closed, everybody is unemployed, it’s a desert with windows, and Agnes’s drink problem gets worse and worse. As you would expect the home life of the children is a disaster, but the two older ones leave home and Shuggie is the one who is left behind to deal with Agnes who as soon as she gets her benefit money spends it all on booze and fags.

This book is very autobiographical and is a grim read at times, especially when you remember that in reality there are so many children having to cope with addicted parents, it’s heart-breaking. However, Douglas Stuart has managed to triumph over his dreadful childhood and has become a successful fashion designer and of course author.

You can read Jack’s far more detailed review here.