Today is another review for the Literary Wives blogging club, in which we discuss the depiction of wives in fiction. If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs.
Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives!
- Lynn of Smoke and Mirrors
- Naomi of Consumed By Ink
- Rebecca of Bookish Beck
My Review
At the beginning of Sea Wife, I thought, oh no, it’s in he said/she said format, which I’m already sick of. That’s not really what’s going on, though. Eventually we realize that Michael’s ship log entries are interspersed with Juliet’s thoughts as she reads them.
Juliet is home after a voyage in the Caribbean. Before the trip, she had been suffering from post-partum depression since the birth of her 2 1/2-year-old boy George (or Doodle). Then her husband Michael convinced her they should buy a sailboat and go to sea. She was terrified of this idea, having no sailing experience herself. However, eventually she agreed. Michael wanted to sail around the world, but she convinced him to sail in the Caribbean off Panama, where they ended up buying the boat, so they could stay near land. Along with them went Doodle and seven-year-old Sybil.
Michael is right about one thing—the adventure forces Juliet out of herself. It also focuses attention on their marriage. They have some lovely moments, but dread arises as we slowly realize that Michael has not returned home.
After my initial bad reaction, which only lasted a few pages, I found this novel absolutely compelling. The descriptions of their stops and of the seas are vivid and beautiful. Both Michael and Juliet have the opportunity to unearth some of their own demons.
What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?
First I have to rant a little about how unprepared this couple were to take on this kind of trip. Michael’s teenage years spent doing a few trips on Lake Erie were definitely not enough experience to set sail on the ocean with his family, especially when Juliet has never sailed. They’re not sailing on a cabin-cruiser-type yacht but on a sailing vessel, which is much more complicated. He tries to teach her during the trip, but she gets confused about the names of things and is afraid of doing something wrong. This mid-life crisis experiment seemed so stupid to me that it took me a while to get past it. They lived in Connecticut, for heaven’s sake. As this was supposed to be his life-long dream, he could have rented a boat and taught her to sail before they went.
In any case, a sailboat, however large, is a good place to focus the mind on the family problems. Michael seems to have been breathtakingly self-absorbed during Juliet’s depression, leaving her alone with the kids almost all the time and not helping with the housework.
Michael loves Juliet, but he harbors a lot of resentment against her for being depressed and for focusing on her memories of being abused by a family friend. He seems angry that she turned out to be a different person than she seemed to be when they met, a woman he thought was brave and self-assured..
Juliet is afraid she no longer loves Michael. Her political beliefs are opposite to his and he hasn’t handled her depression well.
I like how their relationship ebbed and flowed during the trip, with good times and not so good, like a real marriage, instead of (more common with our Literary Wives books) being unrelentingly bad. Living the dream, Michael is nicer and more involved with the kids even though he is occasionally impatient and Juliet has gotten out of herself. The couple end up really having adventures, as well as working out some of their problems. But how does it end? I’m not telling.
What? Me Read? 
The lack of preparation was pretty ridiculous and maybe unrealistic, but I suspended my disbelief. I really enjoyed the alternating POVs and the use of Michael’s ship’s log.
My problem is I have a brother who was VERY prepared to do just this, with a wife who could sail. They set out, and despite his having sailed extensively on Lake Superior and the San Francisco Bay, he found out that on the ocean he was deadly seasick, so they only made it down to Mexico on their around the world trip and had to limp back up to Oakland.
Oh wow! Yeah, I guess the open ocean is a whole other thing.
Absolutely!
I can’t imagine being stuck on a boat with a husband and two young kids – the very idea makes me feel stressed!
No kidding!
I also liked that the couple had ups and downs, and their thoughts were all over the place about their marriage. Sometimes I liked them and sometimes they annoyed me. I could sympathize with Juliet’s anger at having been left alone to do everything at home, but I could also sympathize with Michael’s resentment of her on-going depression. So well done.
I guess what bothers me about Michael’s resentment is that you can’t help being depressed, and when you’re depressed, it’s hard to get yourself to do something about it.
True. And the person feeling resentful feels guilty about their resentment!
That is so true.