Book Buzz: A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst
They were such extraordinarily different people in the way they related to the world and other people. He was this awkward and lonely man before he met her, living quite a dislocated life, and she was this livewire and such a compelling, energetic, positive presence. [There’s] something about how a marriage like that works, then putting that marriage in this extreme scenario, to the ultimate test.
There was something I found to be universal about that. The best stories are ones that are highly specific and, in this case, very extreme, but that have some universal resonance. We all know what it is to hit crunch points or to have [to] face crises with a partner, or with a friend, or a significant other, and what that does to a relationship, what that does to you as an individual, what it reveals to you about yourself, but also about that other person.
― Sophie Elmhirst, Interview, Indies Introduce, American Booksellers Association
What booksellers are saying about Marriage at Sea
- I love a good marriage story and this one is fascinating. Maurice and Maralyn set out to sail the world, with very little in the way of radio equipment. They get quite far before their boat sinks and they are stranded with a life raft and a dinghy. The book does a wonderful job of conveying their quirks and relationship before and after the sinking. Their survival is absolutely fascinating.
― Christina Tabereaux, The Snail on the Wall in Huntsville, Alabama | BUY
- An engaging and really fun to read story of total misery! If I am ever shipwrecked, I really hope I have a Maralyn in my boat. Readers who enjoy non-fiction that reads like fiction will love this one.
― Elizabeth Goodrich, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama | BUY
- What a remarkable tale of marine survival. The journalist/author skillfully recounts the real-life tale of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey. Their love, strength, and cooperation overcome the disparity and dangers they face. They abandon everything to take off in their yacht from the UK to New Zealand. One year into their journey, their boat was struck by a sperm whale, which caused it to sink. They are stranded on a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for 118 days with very little provisions before finally being rescued 900 miles from where their boat sank. Maralyn’s perseverance, tenacity, and optimism were the main reasons they managed to survive. I can’t stop thinking about all they endured and how I may have handled it. Great read!
― Sandra Pinkney, Underground Books in Carrollton, Georgia | BUY
About Sophie Elmhirst
Sophie Elmhirst is an award-winning journalist who writes regularly for The Guardian Long Read and The Economist; her work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Harper’s Bazaar, among other places. She’s the winner of the British Press Award for Feature Writer of the Year and a Foreign Press Award. She lives in London and A Marriage at Sea is her first book.
Book Buzz: A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst Read More »
I wanted to write a controlled, intense, strange, sensual, truthful novel set firmly in a genre I’m increasingly thinking of as wonder. You can watch a romcom where someone is covered with bees and they’re terrified, and you’re laughing, so their experience is not the same as your experience. Likewise, you can be watching a horror film, and they think they’re having a normal Monday, and you know better. That’s where the horror happens.
A Gardin Wedding allows readers to take an emotional journey with Martha—one where she drops her tough exterior and heals the hurt inside. While this heartwarming family and friendship drama with romantic elements is the second book in my Gardins of Edin series, it can also stand alone. I welcome readers who are familiar with the Gardin family because they enjoyed The Gardins of Edin as well as those who haven’t read it yet.
The father in the story “All the Other Demons” is an exaggerated version of my own dad, a weird, verbose man who loved to spellbind his children with strange tales and arcane lore, patchwork narratives drawn from whatever sources he needed to hold our imaginations captive. As I grew older and started performing my own version of the charismatic raconteur, my father said I suffered from a “hyperbolic condition,” a genetically inherited illness enhanced by a steady diet of tall tales. By the time I started writing poetry in high school, I was possessed with the power of language, and my main goal was to enchant readers with streams of words—never mind the subject matter.
I’ve always thought that the legend of the fox is so fascinating. In Chinese literature and also Japanese and Korean legends, the fox is a shapeshifter, as you mentioned, who can turn itself into a very attractive person. And folklore is full of these stories – many of them odd figments of stories – of foxes who interact with people, often tricking them, sometimes killing them or making off with their property.
I live in Portland — so very close to Seattle — and like you said, everyone in the Pacific Northwest lives under the shadow of something coming that you can never really prepare for. And as a climate journalist, I was really interested in that. I was interested in the ways that we can’t get prepared. And at the time that I started writing this book, I was also pregnant. Pregnancy and having a kid is another thing that everyone tells you to get prepared for, because of how scary and unknowable it is, but the reality is that it’s completely unknowable. You cannot imagine it until you have lived through it. I think that, thematically, is what brought me to the book. What gave me the idea for the book was definitely that I was terrified of the earthquake. I was pregnant, and I could not stop thinking about the earthquake.
