Penelope Fitzgerald guides her charming cast of eccentrics through a series of mishaps and muddles. Along the way, we are treated to Fitzgerald's trademark wit, deft characterization, and vivid scene setting. We hope the following questions will stimulate discussion for reading groups and, for every reader, provide a deeper understanding of Offshore . There are repeated references to the ebb and flood of the river's tide. But a certain failure, distressing to themselves, to be like other people caused them to sink back . .
Decision is torment for anyone with imagination.
She has also written three biographies. Prior to her career as a novelist, Fitzgerald led a varied pro-fessional life. In addition to raising three children, she worked as journalist, in the Ministry of Food, at the BBC, and as a teacher. These experiences, as well as her travels, provided a wonderfully rich harvest of settings and characters from which she later crafted her remarkable fictions. Among her abiding themes are the courage and determination of innocence in the face of sometimes monstrous adversity, the rewards of courageous eccentricity or creative effort, survival in terms of one's own sense of self, and the sometimes tiny sources of both grand achievement and terrible loss.