2011/01:Offshore -- Penelope Fitzgerald

Offshore -- Penelope Fitzgerald

The barge-dwellers, creatures of neither firm land nor water, would have liked to be more respectable than they were. They aspired towards the Chelsea shore, where, in the early 1960s, many thousands lived with sensible aspirations and adequate amounts of money. But a certain failure, distressing to themselves, to be like other people, caused them to sink back, with so much else that drifted or was washed up, into the mud moorings of the great tideway. (p.10)

( non-spoilery review )