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A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck
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96/99
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18/99
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97/99
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About This Book
**A Guardian, Observer & Waterstones Nonfiction Book of 2024** What begins as an eccentric English love story turns into one of the most dramatic adventures ever recorded... Maurice and Maralyn couldn't be more different. He is as cautious and awkward as she is charismatic and forceful. It seems an unlikely romance, but it works. Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maralyn has an sell the house, build a boat, leave England -- and its oil crisis, industrial strikes and inflation -- forever. It is hard work, turning dreams into reality, but finally they set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway there, their beloved boat is struck by a whale and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On their tiny raft, their love is put to the test. When Maurice begins to withdraw into himself, it falls upon Maralyn to keep them both alive. Filled with danger, spirit, and tenderness, this is a book about human connection and the human condition; about how we survive -- not just at sea, but in life.
Reviews
"When Elmhirst comes close to breaking the fourth wall, that contribute to the pleasure of this exciting book."
"Has an admirably light touch; her short sentences contain something of the Baileys' emotionlessness, their desolation, silence, and the slow putrefaction of their faculties."
"She vividly renders the power of the sea around them ..."
"The story is a jaw-dropper ..."
"Elmhirst sets her reader down inside a world that is both tiny and vast, at once ruthlessly monotonous and violently unpredictable ..."
"The emotional acuity of the book lies as much in those passages of high drama as in the before and the after of them ..."
"She manages to make the Baileys a little more known without inventing new thoughts for them."
"To say Elmhirst's book is nail-bitingly tense at times is an understatement ..."
"A nimbly told story that should serve as a caution—but oddly, too, as inspiration—to would-be escapists."
"The grisly details of survival are narrated by Elmhirst with vivid immediacy, and her handling of the lead-up and the aftermath are equally fascinating."
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