Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald is in keeping with the other novels of hers I’ve read (The Bookshop and The Beginning of Spring) with ordinary people in seemingly ordinary situations. But there’s always an element of the unusual, comic moments and much left unsaid. In Offshore, we have a group of barge owners on the Thames in the early 1960s. Other writers would give you this story in 400 pages, with each character’s situation meticulously detailed; Fitzgerald gives you one in less than 200 pages, and leaves you wondering. Not that I’m complaining! For me, it’s OK to wonder after I’ve closed the page; it brings the characters alive somehow, in a different way than if we read all about them within the pages of a book. It’s a different kind of reading experience, that’s all. I’m looking forward to reading another book by Fitzgerald.