Category Archives: New York Times Notable

There must be something funny in my subconscious that it just keeps picking books about marriage, or divorce, or the complications of marriage or or – but it’s not that I’m seeking these books out. More that the ones that find might right now are… all of a theme. Call it the universe helping me work through it all.

Anyway, Sophie Elmhirt’s non-fiction A Marriage At Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck follows Maurice and Marilyn on their ill-fated sailing trip from one place to another (exact locations are used in the book, but dear reader, this writer does not care enough to look them up).

Before they set out on the journey we figure out the married couple are odd. Odd as individuals; odd as a couple. They decide to sell their house, built a boat over a few years and dedicate their lives to living at sea. Odd as it is to imagine doing such a thing yourself, odder still (to this reader anyway) that fate or fortune would bring together two people so similarly devoted.

But so goes the world, and so goes Maurice and Marilyn off to sea. ONLY TO BE SHIPWRECKED (it’s not a spoiler, it’s in the title) when a whale bashes up their boat. Honestly many reviews make much of this whale (maybe for the improbability of it?) but the whale did not feature heavily in my read of it, so much as the absolute nuttiness of them having set out without a radio (for the purity!) and working flares (just…. oops).

Of course we know the whole time that things must work out mostly okay because they survive to tell the tale (or at least that was my comfortable read of it until A. suggested that perhaps it was written posthumously based on journal entires and so I spent the rest of the book in gasping suspense worried they’d be eaten by a shark, or let’s be honest, starve/die of dyhydration/exposure etc).

I’ll give you the same gift of suspense and not tell you for sure, except to say that by and large the best parts of the book were not about shipwreck or (possible) survival, but instead were about how these two managed not to eat one another alive (and I don’t mean literally) in the torment of being alone at sea.

I’ve heard – though I am an unreliable narrator on this point – that marriage can be tough and requires Some Work to make it through. One can only guess the kind of fortitude being married while dying at sea requires. Actually, you don’t need to guess. You can read this gripping and engaging book and be reminded – and don’t we all need the reminder right now – of how much hope and love alone can accomplish.