The Offing

Benjamin Myers, 2019  

Read: September 2024 – April 2025 (stuck in the book traffic jam) 

Edition read: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020, 260 pages 

Fiction – Bildungsroman 

The plotline of The Offing is slightly more pedestrian than Myer’s more typical ‘Northern Gothic’ novels; working-class boy (Robert) from post-WW2 English mining town meets eccentric upper-class woman (Dulcie), who has retreated from society due to long-lost love, where they experience mild culture clash and she exposes him to the better things in life. 

Told in the first person, the story takes an analeptic form, which somewhat explains the rich vocabulary, but for a narrator introduced as painfully ancient, he has a remarkable memory for details. Read this deliberately rich vocabulary with patience and the five senses get a workout; the colours, smells, feelings, sights and sounds of nature all feature regularly and prominently and there are some great turns of phrase (‘The ashen sea roared in the distance like a football stadium witnessing an extra-time injustice’). However, the plentitude of what I came to feel were overly frequent and verbose descriptions of nature did get monotonous. 

There are two main sections – Robert by himself, which if anything is slightly more interesting, capturing the landscape(s) of northern England as he walks across it, and then when he encounters Dulcie. There is a subplot about poetry, which seems slightly meta – is Myers talking about how Northern working-class people aren’t supposed to like poetry, but if you take them out the pits, they do? 

If there had been something else happen, it could have had a more compelling sense of drive; unfortunately, besides the over-the-top descriptions, the stakes just feel a bit low. 

Worth reading? No, even though I came into this wanting to like it – Myers has written some brilliant books. 

Worth re-reading? No. Myer’s other books – The Gallows Pole and These Darkening Days – however, are well worth a read.