Seawife by Amity Gaige #Review #ReadFleet #Seawife

I am delighted to feature Seawife on the blog today. This literary fiction novel by Amity Gaige is a Fleet publication.

Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her anemic dissertation when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. The couple are novice sailors, but Michael persuades Juliet to say yes. 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 - a boat that Michael has christened the Juliet.

The initial result is transformative: their marriage is given a gust of energy, and even the children are affected by the beauty and wonderful vertigo of travel. The sea challenges them all - and most of all, Juliet, who suffers from postpartum depression.

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 dire, life-changing events that unfolded at sea; and Michael's captain's log - that provides a riveting, slow-motion account of those same inexorable events.
Exuberant, harrowing, witty, and exquisitely written, Sea Wife is impossible to put down.

My Thoughts

This has a distinctive literary style and is written from the perspectives of Juliet in the first person and her husband, Michael who you hear through his log book and journal. You know from the start that something terrible has happened but it slowly becomes clear just what this is. The family have embarked on a year's sailing. Whether it is wise to set off with a wife who is in depression and a marriage which is strained is up for debate. Through its format, you get to see both sides of their experiences and also to discover the 'baggage' which they have brought with them, which goes right back to their own childhood.

    Layered on top of the description of the journey, the sailing technicalities and stunning places they travel to, you also have their relationship, view of each other and roles as parents. Beyond that, you are drawn to consider the themes of marriage, gender roles, post natal depression, child abuse, politics, the case for poetry. It is a complicated book in which the sea itself is a powerful allegory for one's state of mind in all its rawness. The force of the sea can be unforgiving yet at other times, is calm and settled. You just never know what is lurking beneath the surface.

In short:  marriage is put under the microscope.

   

About the Author

AMITY GAIGE is the author of three novels, O My Darling, The Folded World, and Schroder, which was short-listed for the Folio Prize in 2014. Gaige is the recipient of many awards for her previous 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, The New York Times, the Literary Review, The Yale Review, and One Story. She lives in Connecticut with her family.

You can follow Amity here: Website

Book link: Amazon UK 

Thanks to Amity Gaige, Grave Vincent and Fleet for a copy of the book and a place on the tour.

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