The Offing, Benjamin Myers, Bloomsbury, 2019
The Offing explores the unexpected friendship between a young adolescent boy and an eccentric older woman living alone above Robin Hood’s Bay. In the summer following the end of the second world war, 16 year-old Robert leaves his Durham mining village to walk south, yearning for independence and the natural world. He meets Dulcie, a woman with impeccable literary connections, strident views and a well-stocked larder. Together they recover the poetry of Dulcie’s companion and lover, Romy, who committed suicide. In doing so, both are inspired, Dulcie to reconcile herself to the loss of Romy and to publish her final poems, and Robert to become a writer. This novel divided opinion. It was admired for its humanity and for the unusual relationship between Dulcie and Robert which lies at its core: Robert is seeking to spread his wings and live a little, Dulcie challenges him with new ideas; Robert in discovering and reading Romy’s poetry enables Dulcie to let go of her grief. They help each other.
Other aspects of the novel are less satisfying. The narrative voice (Robert recalling in old age his 16 year-old self) seemed inauthentic, especially in the recollection of details in the landscape, in conversations, in the sophisticated articulation of adolescent thoughts and feelings. This was exacerbated by the complexity of the language and at times excessive use of simile. Robert tells the reader early on that the larger part of his young life has been spent staring out of classroom windows and it is evident from his conversations with Dulcie that he is not a well-read young man. For some of our readers, these dissonances in the heart of the narrative outweighed the humanity of the novel.