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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
"Still, Elmhirst's writing is lovely, often lyrical ..."
"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."
"Few nonfiction books get a reader's adrenaline pumping quite like Sophie Elmhirst's A Marriage at Sea ..."
"She doles out the adventures, such as they were, and tells them vividly ..."
"A clear-eyed, insightful anatomy of a marriage."
"It's billed as a love story; I don't know if it is."
"Aside from all the adrenaline boosting and gory reports of oozing butt sores, rancid meat and lack of potable water, part of what makes A Marriage at Sea so compulsively readable is Elmhirst's meditation on the Bailey's relationship as their marriage is put to the ultimate test."
"Elmhirst sets her reader down inside a world that is both tiny and vast, at once ruthlessly monotonous and violently unpredictable ..."
"In Elmhirst's delicate, humane depiction of the couple, her choice of narrative framing, her pacing and her compassion, she renders A Marriage at Sea an act of beauty in its own right."
"This beautifully conceived book by Sophie Elmhirst, her first, retells the Baileys' story not just as that extraordinary tale of endurance, but as a singular and universal kind of love story ..."
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