Best Fiction 2020, The What
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 faultlines 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. Listen as I discuss Sea Wife with Alison Stewart on WNYC’s, All Of It.
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PRAISE
“Gaige’s razor-sharp novel is wise to marital and broader politics. But it’s also such gripping escapism that it feels like a lifeboat.”
“Sea Wife is a moody and compelling literary novel about the hidden depths of a marriage. It’s the intricate design of this tale — which Gaige pilots expertly — and its eloquent revelations about the inner workings of the Partlow’s relationship that distinguish Sea Wife. The final resolution of the Partlow’s differences is achieved in a fashion that even the most sharp-eyed reader won’t be able to spot, looming in the distance.”
“Profound and universal. . .Sea Wife achieves a lovely balance between the real and the metaphoric.”
“In her new novel, Sea Wife, Amity Gaige depicts the journey from a dual point of view, interspersing the wife’s recollection s of how it all went wrong with diary entries from the husband, both of which cut to the heart of mundane marital strife and the legacy of trauma.”
“With taut prose and well-paced action, Sea Wife provides an excellent escape from reality while exposing universal truths about marriage, motherhood and childhood trauma. In a world where so many “shoulds” are thrown upon mothers, this story’s mother does her best to be honest. Sea Wife is brilliant, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful.”
“Splendid. . .profound. Every element of this impressive novel clicks into a dazzling, heartbreaking whole.”
“A lot’s packed into this smart, pacy and affecting book, which vividly captures the peaks and troughs of both married life and life on the waves. Throughout, Gaige intersperses Juliet’s narrative with extracts from Michael’s ship’s log, forming a dialogue the intimacy of which, we poignantly realise, was impossible face-to-face. And while Sea Wife plumbs some murky psychological depths, it still pulls off an uplifting conclusion.”
“Gaige is a superb maritime writer. She writes beautifully about water and sky. She makes sailing seem both an existential drama (when a storm hits, it’s like Lear on the heath) and a complex technical enterprise. [Sea Wife] deftly grafts narrative mystery — what happened on that boat? What painful childhood memory is Juliet avoiding? — onto a sharp examination of domesticity.”
“Amity Gaige’s previous book, Schroder, is one of my favorite novels of the last decade. As you might imagine, I was keenly eager to see what Gaige might do next, and with her latest, Sea Wife, I was not disappointed. What will stick with me are Gaige’s astute observations on balancing personal identity with one’s role in a family, of negotiating marriage and parenthood, of contending with the demons of one’s past or setting them aside in order to simply get through the day. At a time when many readers might be ready to jettison their own circumstances and set sail (at least in their imaginations), Sea Wife comes along at just the right moment.”
“Sea Wife by Amity Gaige is like the ocean – deep, dazzling, terrifying, timeless, volatile, and filled with mystery and wonder. There are many parallels to quarantine and being alone with your family on a small boat in the middle of an unpredictable ocean. It may not always be smooth sailing but it’s a journey that, if processed properly, can lead to resilience and eventual joy.”
“Gaige’s expertise about sailing never feels forced or academic. There are wonderful, jewel-like moments of discovery as [the characters] linger in the beautiful, sometimes unnamed, isles of the Caribbean. A dark and thrilling read.”
“Gaige sets up this intriguing literary thriller with panache, seducing the reader with shimmering descriptions of coral seas and uninhabited inlets while foreshadowing the calamity at the novel’s center. Gaige intriguingly uses the mechanics of a floundering marriage to examine the American obsession with individualism.”