Sea Wife (Gaige)

Sea Wife 
Amity Gaige, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525656494


Summary
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;

Michael’s captain’s log, which provides a riveting, slow-motion account of these same inexorable events, a dialogue that reveals the fault lines 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. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in West Hartford, Connecticut


Amity Gaige is the author of four novels, O My Darling (2005), The Folded World (2007), and Schroder (2013), and Sea Wife (2020).

Schroder, Gaige's third novel, was short-listed for the Folio Prize in 2014. Published in eighteen countries, it was named one of best books of 2013 by The New York Times Book Review, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Cosmopolitan, Denver Post, Buffalo News, and Publisher's Weekly, among others.

Gaige is the recipient of many awards for her other novels, including Foreword Book of the Year Award for 2007; and in 2006, she was named one of the "5 Under 35" outstanding emerging writers by the National Book Foundation.

She has a Fulbright and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, New York Times, Literary Review, Yale Review, and One Story. She lives in Connecticut with her family. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Gaige has been towing you to tragedy with the graceful crawl of a poet and the motorboat intensity of a suspense author.… [She] tells the story of a family adrift, spun so thoroughly and vigorously out of their comfort zone that they eventually lose sight of the horizon. Finding out how… makes you appreciate the firm, familiar ground under your feet.
Jennifer Egan - New York Times Book Review


Sea Wife is a moody and compelling literary novel about the hidden depths of a marriage. It nods to, but does not fully embrace, the conventions of suspense…. To Gaige’s credit, 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.
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post


Gaige here fractures a single, suspenseful plot into… two first-person narratives…. Cutting between storylines generates narrative suspense…. Gaige is a superb maritime writer. She writes beautifully about water and sky… [and] makes sailing seem both an existential drama (when a storm hits, it’s like Lear on the heath) and a complex technical enterprise.
Boston Globe


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.
People


Cuts to the heart of mundane marital strife and the legacy of trauma.
Elle


(Starred review) [A] splendid, wrenching novel…. Gaige balances …a profound depiction of the weight of depression and the pains of a complicated relationship. Every element of this impressive novel clicks into a dazzling, heartbreaking whole.
Publishers Weekly


This book's unusual structure is effective once you figure out what Gaige is up to. There are multiple layers to explore for… literary scholars or a… book club, as Gaige has much to say about… marriage, particularly in our current political/cultural climate. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal


[T]he challenges of two people finding themselves on opposite ends of the political spectrum to Juliet’s depression, which leads her to give up on her dissertation, and the challenges of life at sea, this surprising novel is stunning and deep.
Booklist


Gaige sometimes strains to keep the couple’s parrying going… and a late-breaking murder mystery that feels tacked-on. None of which sinks the story, but it does dampen its power. A powerful if sometimes wayward take on a marriage on the rocks.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for SEA WIFE … then take off on your own:

1. What is wrong with this marriage? What pulls Juliet and Michael together … and what drives them apart?

2. Why does Michael decide to embark on the sailing adventure? What does he hope the sea voyage will accomplish, for himself, for Juliet, and for their marriage?

3. The novel's first sentence is a question posed by Juliet: "Did my mistake begin with the boat? Or my marriage itself?" What do you think—the boat, the marriage … or something else entirely?

4. Juliet is a complex woman: how would you describe her? Talk about the childhood trauma that continues to haunt her? What role does it play in her marriage, in her overall life?

5. Talk about Michael's political grievances. How do they affect the marriage?

6. What insights does Juliet gain by reading through Michael's log?

7. Did you revel, along with the Partlows, in the early part of the journey, once the the family got its sea legs? What might you have found particularly enchanting?

7. Once the weather and the Partlows' lack of experience catches up with them, did you wonder what they were doing on a 44-foot boat—with their little children—to begin with?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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