brianreadsbooks's Reviews (820)

3.5 stars.

In the end I quite enjoyed Offshore, but I wasn’t sure for the first quarter of it. Fitzgerald won the Booker prize in 1979 for this novel about a community of people living on barges in the River Thames in West London. It’s thoughtful but also quite light and humorous.

There are some great bits where the dialogue has the perfect wit of a sitcom almost, and I laughed out loud multiple times at her skewering descriptions of neighbourhoods and shops around London. But other moments I had to re-read the page 2-3 times because the writing was so clever I couldn’t follow what just happened. In the end it’s a nice short book, and a reflection on loneliness and community. It’s worth a read.

This is a brilliant exhibition book with many of Salman Toor’s finest paintings, as well as a selection of drawings (most of which were studies for larger paintings). It also includes two excellent forewords that explore the meaning and symbolism of the works, and compare historical artists from Europe and South Asia that inspired or are reminiscent of Toor’s pieces. Last, it includes a short story by Hanya Yanagihara, which lives in the same world as Toor’s and itself is a creative work of art. The quality of the printing and the thought out into this book by Baltimore Museum of Art is excellent.