But like all utopian visions, theirs had its contradictions. They’d sold all their belongings to build a boat. They were abandoning everyone they knew to live afloat, alone, unshackled from obligation and community, from all the things that bind a person to a place or its people, from the day-to-day indignities of ordinary life and the unseen rules whose weight perhaps you feel only in the place you were raised. After all, what is more self-interested than running away?
— Sophie Elmhirst, A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck (Riverhead Books, July 8, 2025)
Notes:
- One of the best books I have ever read. Highly recommended.
- NY Times Book Review: “Stranded at Sea, Would Their Marriage Survive? A Marriage at Sea” tells the stranger-than-fiction story of one couple who traded their lives for the ocean — and almost lost them.”
- “Beauty — finding it, making it — has always been an act of defiance against despair. In Elmhirst’s delicate, humane depiction of the couple, her choice of narrative framing, her pacing and her compassion, she renders “A Marriage at Sea” an act of beauty in its own right. I found myself, alternately, holding my breath as I read at top speed, wandering rooms in search of someone to read aloud to, and placing the book facedown, arrested by quiet statements that left me reeling with their depth.” — Blair Braverman.
- Sophie Elmhirst official website.