Penelope Fitzgerald has been compared variously to DH Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh and Martin Amis. Her admirers are drawn to Fitzgerald's sparseness of expression and her ability to trace the subtle social interactions between disparate characters, who often work or live together in small, offbeat communities.

Offshore, which won the Booker prize in 1979, showcases her talent as a miniaturist. It tells the story of a group of gentle eccentrics who live on riverboats moored on the Thames. The action is centred on Nenna, a bohemian Canadian expat whose husband has left her and who is left quite literally struggling to keep things afloat.

The landscape reflects the fortunes of its inhabitants  the characters feel with each tide "the patches, strains and gaps in their craft, as if they were weak places in their own bodies", and when Nenna attempts a disastrous reconciliation with her husband, there is a predictably violent storm. Fitzgerald is adept at evoking the atmosphere of late 1960s London with rich period detail but beyond this the book feels slight and inconclusive, meandering along with only the sketchiest plot. Novels that concentrate on the minutiae of behaviour at the expense of a rip-roaring narrative can be tremendously successful, but only if the reader truly cares about the characters. 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.