Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald

After publishing her first novel in 1977 at the age
of sixty-one, Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) went on to become one of the most remarkable
and highly acclaimed English writers of the last century. Each of the three novels
gathered here vividly and unforgettably conjures up an entire world.

The Booker
Prize-winning novel Offshore limns the marginal existence of an eccentric assortment
of barge dwellers on the Thames in the early 1960s, a group of misfits who are drawn
to life on the muddy river in exile from the world of the landlocked. Human Voices takes us behind the scenes at the BBC during World War II, as world-weary directors
and nubile young assistants attempt to save Britain's heritage and keep Britons calm
in the face of a feared German invasion. In The Beginning of Spring, a struggling
English printer living in Moscow in 1913 is abandoned by his wife and left alone
to care for his three young children in the face of the impending revolution.

Fitzgerald
is a genius of the relevant detail and the deftly sketched context, and these narrative
gems are marvels of compassion, wit, and piercing insight.