Full disclosure: I finished this book yesterday and when I finished I was glad it was over. But I kept thinking about it, so clearly it was a positive experience just to read it (I want books that make me THINK, after all!). But I just can’t decide on a rating. Did I love it? No. Did I hate it? No. Am I grateful to Knopf Doubleday for a copy of Sea Wife in exchange for my honest review? Oh yeah.
It was described as “a literary page-turner about a young family who escape suburbia for a yearlong sailing trip that upends all of their lives.” So I was expecting a large amount of detail about sailing, most of which was a foreign language to me, and I’m not terribly interested in learning a foreign language right now. I was also expecting a large amount of introspection and detail about family dynamics, and one or more big events or adventures. That was all there. I wasn’t expecting as much on depression and childhood trauma…but that was integral to the story, so I was fine with it.
The story is told from alternating points of view of both the wife (Juliet, also the name of the sailboat) and the husband (Michael, writing in his ship’s log). Even though they have a seven-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son, they decide to buy a 44-foot sailboat (sight unseen) and spend a year sailing the world. Right away, I thought “what could POSSIBLY go wrong?” but I realize I tend to be risk-averse, and I admired their courage to pursue their (really HIS) dream.
At the beginning, Juliet is depressed by the relentless demands of being a full-time mother and her inability to finish her dissertation (I admit I thought anyone would be depressed after years of studying “confessional poetry”). She takes to hiding: “I am a mother. Gradually, I just gave them all away, all my spaces, one by one down to the very last closet.” Michael has sailing experience, so it seems like it should be fine. The beginning of the trip bodes well, as their marriage seems to get a breath of fresh air with Juliet’s emergence from her depression and the way the children blossom as they learn to live on the water, confined to a small space (it made my claustrophobia come out, I admit).
Spoiler alert: things go wrong. Old wounds emerge. Unexpected events happen. Police are involved. Juliet turns into Anne Sexton (not exactly, but close enough). I found much of the writing to be beautiful. I found the atmosphere to be unsettling. I found Juliet to be relatable, despite being a bit of a pain. And I found Michael to be somewhat self-absorbed, but maybe that was after years of dealing with Juliet’s illness.
Definitely worth a read. I admit I was eager for it to end, as I found the whole experience unsettling…but that is likely due to my own inability to take such a risk as well as the current pandemic and quarantine making everything a bit weird. Four stars.