Sea wife

Title:

Sea wife

Author:

Gaige, Amity, 1972- author.

Personal Author:

Gaige, Amity, 1972- author.

ISBN:

9780525656494

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

267 pages ; 25 cm

General Note:

"This is a Borzoi book"--Title page verso.

Abstract:

"Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. With their two kids - Sybil, age seven, and George, age two - Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their forty-four foot sailboat awaits them. The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given a gust of energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being feral children at sea. Despite the stresses of being novice sailors, the family learns to crew the boat together on the ever-changing sea. The vast horizons and isolated islands offer Juliet and Michael reprieve - until they are tested by the unforeseen. Sea Wife is told in gripping dual perspectives: Juliet's first person narration, after the journey, as she struggles to come to terms with the life-changing events that unfolded at sea, and Michael's captain's log, which provides a riveting, slow-motion account of these same inexorable events, a dialogue that reveals the fault lines created by personal history and political divisions."--Publisher description.

Subject Term:

Survival at sea -- Fiction.

Married people -- Fiction.

Ocean travel -- Fiction.

Parenthood -- Fiction.

Genre:

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Ginter Park	Book	FICTION GAIGE	Searching... Unknown
Searching... West End	Book	FICTION GAIGE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A New York Times Notable Book

" Sea Wife is a gripping tale of survival at sea--but that's just the beginning. Amity Gaige also manages, before she's done, to probe the underpinnings of romantic love, marriage, literary ambition, political inclinations in the Trump age, parenthood, and finally, the nature of survival itself in our broken world. Gaige is thrillingly talented, and her novel enchants."
--Jennifer Egan

"Sea Wife brilliantly breathes life not only into the perils of living at sea, but also into the fraught and hidden dangers of domesticity, motherhood, and marriage. What a smart, swift, and thrilling novel."
--Lauren Groff

From the highly acclaimed author of Schroder , a smart, sophisticated page literary page-turner about a young family who escape suburbia for a yearlong sailing trip that upends all of their lives.

Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. With their two kids--Sybil, age seven, and George, age two--Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their forty-four foot sailboat awaits them.

The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given a gust of energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being feral children at sea. Despite the stresses of being novice sailors, the family learns to crew the boat together on the ever-changing sea. The vast horizons and isolated islands offer Juliet and Michael reprieve - until they are tested by the unforeseen.

Sea Wife is told in gripping dual perspectives: Juliet's first person narration, after the journey, as she struggles to come to terms with the life-changing events that unfolded at sea, and Michael's captain's log, which provides a riveting, slow-motion account of these same inexorable events, a dialogue that reveals the fault lines created by personal history and political divisions.

Sea Wife is a transporting novel about marriage, family and love in a time of unprecedented turmoil. It is unforgettable in its power and astonishingly perceptive in its portrayal of optimism, disillusionment, and survival.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A family sailing excursion goes badly awry in a perfect storm of weather, naiveté, and marital tension. Michael Partlow feels trapped in a dull job and wants an adventure; his wife, Juliet, is a stay-at-home mother of two who's prone to depression. (Her malaise is exacerbated by her having to abandon her dissertation on the poet Anne Sexton, another depressive mom.) In an impulsive moment, Michael decides to purchase a small yacht (which he renames Juliet) and brings the family down to Panama to sail it to Cartagena, Colombia. We know early that something went wrong on the trip: Juliet notes that their house is "a point of interest," Michael is absent, and she's taken to retreating to a closet. As Gaige parcels out details of the calamity, she frames Michael and Juliet's story as he said, -she said dueling narratives: Juliet's present-day narration of the trip's aftermath alternates with entries from Michael's logbook. The parrying reveals how sometimes even the closest couples fail to understand each other: Michael is prone to mocking Juliet's sensitivity ("Tears, a husband's kryptonite") while Juliet only had the slightest sense of his internal seething, which intertwines grumpy political grievances with escalating contempt for his marriage. Gaige is well-suited for this sort of psychological exploration: Her previous novel, Schroder (2013), smartly chronicled the irrationality that can consume a marital split. And the seafaring sections are gripping, as the family's lives are literally tempest-tossed. Yet the novel is also a ship carrying a lot of ballast, as Gaige sometimes strains to keep the couple's parrying going: spats, riffs on parenting, literary analysis, and a late-breaking murder mystery that feels tacked-on. None of which sinks the story, but it does dampen its power. A powerful if sometimes wayward take on a marriage on the rocks. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.