Literaturkreis Mai 2024
wunderschöne Sprache

This is the story of Robert, the sixteen year old son of a Durham coal miner, on the cusp of adulthood, as he foot-slogs slowly southwards just after the Second World War. His simple hand-to-mouth existence changes when he meets Dulcie, who's older, eccentric, from a very different world, and who opens her home to him. This story, which starts so simply yet poetically, continues as a slow burn, but one which ends with both characters' lives being changed irrevocably. Here you will find an involving tale, lyrically told, by an author who's immersed in the sights, scents and images of the northern countryside he knows and loves, and who paints his characters well. ( )

Brilliant. I listened and read, the narration was excellent. ( )

In this too lyrical and unconvincing novel, an old man, seemingly a terminally ill poet, looks back to the summer that changed the course of his life.

Just after the end of World War II, as a 16-year-old boy from a small colliery town near Durham, he’d decided to set out on a trek around the north of England. The journey through the natural world of the north was seen as his last taste of freedom before he submitted to the fate he wished to escape. His parents’ expectation for their only child was that he’d follow his father into the mines, and he himself had seen no alternative. That summer, working agricultural jobs along the way—in the place of men who never returned from the devastation of the battlefields—Robert happened upon the cottage of an eccentric older woman, Dulcie. He ended up staying on her land for the rest of the season, doing odd jobs and restoring a shed that once belonged to Dulcie’s much younger female lover, a poet who drowned six years earlier. The young man’s friendship with this opinionated, worldly, and foul-mouthed woman (mysteriously financially independent and even more inexplicably supplied with rich German foods while the rest of still-rationed England went hungry) proved to be transformative. Dulcie provided Robert with a literary education and encouraged him to attend university. The friendship was to endure as long as Dulsie lived—and beyond.

This is a novel I wish I could have liked. In fact, given all the glowing reviews, I was so determined to like it that I pushed on to the very end. I initially found the writing quite lovely, but the surfeit of figurative language, onomatopoeia, and the lists and lists of flora and fauna (including a quite lyrical description of badger feces) ultimately overwhelmed me. There is also some not-very-good poetry that Myers would like us to believe is absolutely brilliant. With a simple, limited and rather clichéd plot, a tragedy I could not feel, and characters and dialogue I could not credit no matter how much I tried, I can only say I did not feel the magic others did. ( )

The Offing was one of 12 books that I committed to reading for a "12 Suggestions" challenge this year and it was a good one to kick things off with. It fell pretty much right in the middle for me.

Sixteen year old Robert is a coal miner's son like his father before him. Pretty much everyone from his town of Durham is connected to the mines in some way. WWII has just ended and he takes the decision to travel around England for a bit and see some of the country before his life goes underground as is expected.

He walks his way across the countryside stopping to do odd jobs for some food and sleeping wherever he can. When he reaches a seaside village he meets Dulcie, an older, no-nonsense, foul-mouthed, frank speaking, well travelled, well read, epicurean. She is unlike anyone he has ever known and he is at once intrigued and slightly confused by her.

Through a series of circumstances he spends the summer with her helping fix up a shed and learning about much about her and her past and even more about himself.

The story is simple and sweet and it really seemed more of an outline through which Myers could sketch his vivid landscapes of the English countryside. There are pages devoted just to the sounds that Robert hears when waking up in a meadow. This outline also allows Dulcie to expound on her philosophies (she's a bit of a rebel), tell stories that include interesting English trivia, and discuss poetry.

Unfortunately, at times it felt like that was all Myers was interested in and so the plot was loose and the characters (just the two of them) weren't particularly enthralling; to the contrary, despite Dulcie having so much promise, she came off as a caricature of the witty and wise older women.

It was an easy read and the factoids in the book were fun but I was never invested. And the ending was a bit too "perfect" and saccharine for my tastes. I know I'm in the minority here but oh well. But I definitely enjoyed it for what it was. A quick and easy read. ( )