"The Bookshop" by Penelope Fitzgerald (Fourth Estate, 2014)

It was first published in 1978. This version has a Preface and Introduction (in which it says "this is no cosy sub-Ealing comedy ... Expectations are constantly denied, explanations withheld", p.xvii). The setting's based on Southwold. Secrets are hard to keep yet people know so little about each other. London (aka the BBC!) and Cambridge are distant and semi-mythical. Early on, Florence Green discusses with Mr Raven the advisability of opening a bookshop in a little sea-side village while holding a horse's tongue. The premises she buys was earmarked as an Arts Centre by one of the locals. It's haunted by a poltergeist. When she starts selling "Lolita" her fortunes change. "They hadn't sold so many of any one thing, not even Build Your Own Racing Dinghy ... they arranged the Lolitas in pyramids, like the tins in the grocer's (p.104)". But she's threatened with a law-suit because of the crowds, and her 11-year old helper dresses in a bikini for the Nativity play. 10 years later she's evicted by a technicality.

To me it's a light comedy of manners, too long at 156 pages. The meeting with Mr Brundish (p.98) is interesting. Elsewhere the lack of explanations and dead-pan responses to unusual events reduce the plausibility without providing a replacement. In such a context, little observations shine in a way that they wouldn't in a denser novel -

• What seemed delicacy in him was usually a way of avoiding trouble; what seemed like sympathy was the instinct to prevent trouble before it started (p.22)
• His fluid personality tested and stole into the weak place of others until it found it could settle down to its own advantage (p.22)
• Later middle age, for the upper middle-class in East Suffolk, marked a crisis, after which the majority became water-colourists, and painted landscapes. It would not have mattered so much if they had painted badly, but they all did it quite well (p.68)
• They won't understand it, but that is all to the good. Understanding makes the mind lazy (p.101)
• "I don't know that men are better judges than women," said Florence, "but they spend much less time regretting their decisions." (p.102)

There's a typo on p.133 - You're to young to bother about dying

"Offshore" by Penelope Fitzgerald (HarperCollins, 1979)

Winner of the Booker Prize. Set on Thames houseboats. Only 140 pages. Characterisation is played for laughs, The girls of 6 and 10 years old act way beyond their years. Even the cat's mental state is revealed. Omniscience plus narrator interjections give a comic feel to the book -

• "Biologically they could be said, as most tideline creatures are, to be 'successful'. They were not easily dislodged. But to sell your craft, to leave the Reach, was felt to be a desperate step, like those of amphibians when, in earlier stages of the world's history, they took ground. Many of these species perished in the attempt" (p.10)
• "She gave him a weary, large-eyed, shires-bred glance, a glance whose horizons should have been bounded by acres of plough and grazing" (p.11)
• "Richard, who always put each section of his life, when it was finished with, quietly behind him, and liked to be able to give a rational explanation for everything" (p.11)
• "Those who felt affection for him had no easy way of telling him so, since he seemed to regard friend and enemy like" (p.12)
• "Nenna's character was faulty, but she had the instinct to see what made other people unhappy, and this instinct had only failed her once, in the case of her own husband" (p.16)
• "Although he tried hard to do so, Richard could never see how anyone could live without things in working order" (p.18)
• "Tilda cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness. At the moment she was perfectly happy" (p.27)
• "his face could be seen. It was very pale and had no expression, as though expressions were surplus to requirements" (p.30)
• "But her heart did not rule her memory, as was the case with Matha and Nenna. At least she was spared that inconvenience" (p.32)
• "she fell in love as only a violinist can" (p.34)
• "Tenderly responsive to the self-deceptions of others, he was unfortunately too well able to understand his own" (p.46)
• "The body must either repair itself or stop functioning, but that is not true of the emotions, and particularly of Willis's emotions" (p.59)
• "He was not quite satisfied with the way his mind was working. Something was out of phase. He did not recognise it as hope" (p.61)
• "The two girls sat on the wall of Old Battersea churchyard to eat their sandwiches. These contained a substance called Spread, and, indeed, that was all you could do with it" (p.65) (a paragraph I find puzzling)
• "'You've always known how to get rid of my friends,' Edward muttered.
  Nenna was no more able to deny this than any other woman" (p.90) (I find this puzzling too)
• "he disliked comparisons, because they made you think about more than one thing at a time" (p.104)

Flights of imagination come and go all but unannounced.

At a meeting people are referred to by the name of their boat. Boats are humanised on p.43 where it says "The old barges, who had once ...". On p.50 it says "Willises, carefully packed in stiff board", "Willises" being artworks by Willis. On p.89 there's "I'm Grace [her boat]. I mean I'm Nenna"

There's some plot. A barge sinks. Nenna begs her estranged husband to return to the boat. She returns alone to find that a neighbour thinks he's just been left by his wife. Richard is attacked.

Typos?

• "'She's a thought damp" (p.91). A touch damp?
• "The he made" (p.98). Then he made?

Other reviews

• Alan Hollinghurst
• Elizabeth Day (I found myself unsympathetically disposed to almost everyone in Offshore, especially the whimsical Nenna, who seems to believe her self-indulgent life is terribly hard. I am sure the fault is entirely mine but Offshore left me feeling rather like I had spent several hours on a draughty barge: cold and with dampened enthusiasm for the whole experience)
• Reading Matters