Review: The Off-Season by Jodie Robins

Rating: 7/10

It’s the off-season in the seaside resort town of Blackpool, where Tommy never imagined he would return. His relationship has broken down, so he returns home to keep an eye on his widowed father. While counting down the hours before attending the funeral of a well-loved friend, a mysterious group turns up on the seafront. One by one, the locals are entranced by their presence until Tommy and his father can no longer resist the allure.

Tommy soon discovers a secret desire his father has been harbouring for his entire life.

A story of what it means to be family with a light touch of magic and healing.

A quiet, wonderful, eerie addition to Wild Hunt Books’ outstanding “Northern Weird Project,” Jodie Robins’ “The Off-Season,” is a novella that reminds us to live in the present. With the backdrop of Blackpool (the most charmingly bedraggled seaside town in Britain) during, funnily enough, the off season, Robins’ writing is dripping with a distinctly northern ennui and a postcard melancholy. Gorgeously and mindfully written, “The Off-Season,” says a lot, despite being very little, and like this reviewer,  is oh so Northern. With some masterful character work, and an atmosphere so vivid you can almost smell the vinegar, this series continues to delight me.

We follow Tommy who moved back to Blackpool to be with his father Al. A tourist hotspot in the summer months, once the Big One closes for the off-season and the weather turns things are quiet. The morning of Joe’s funeral, Tommy and Al are in Pat’s cafe, along with David and Mark, Alicia, and B&B owners, Sheila and George. The frosty atmosphere, in anticipation of what will undeniably be a somber affair, shifts however when the charabanc appears, and out of it hop a strange group indeed. 

There was a particular thrill for me in the pages of “The Off-Season,” considering I have personally been jostled senseless by “The Big Dipper,” and had the shit scared out of me by the haunted house next to the entrance. That being said, for the bulk of the novella the Blackpool Robins writes about is one that most will find alien. A Blackpool not of hen dos and hot dogs but of peeling paint and shuttered buildings. There’s a real bleakness in the opening scene, where we meet the clearly rather bored cast. A coastal malaise, a drabness that radiates off of the page, a weariness and tedium within each of the characters during the off-season. This is however quickly juxtaposed by an almost jarring vibrancy, noise and lights and performance. Robins’ command of setting is genius, and almost puppeteer-like, twisting and sagging and shimmering and pivoting. 

Of course that’s something that refers directly to the title, and the big metaphor. What I took from this novella is that we are stuck in the present, so we may as well live in it. “The Off-Season,” reminded me that all good things, take the on-season, or relationships, or anything really, must come to an end- and that’s not necessarily a pessimistic message, but a reminder to appreciate what I have now, dance in the rain instead of waiting for the sun- resist the tide. YOLO, as I believe they say. 

A story that is reassuring and sinister in equal measure, depending perhaps upon how you’re feeling on the day, Jodie Robins’ “The Off-Season,” is a must read. Delightfully strange and strangely tender- it sure is weird up North.