A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst
Published: July 8, 2025 by Riverhead Books
Buy this book at: Bookshop / Barnes & Noble / Kobo
Book synopsis:
Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away?
Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But Maurice began to study nautical navigation. Maralyn made detailed lists of provisions. And in June 1972, they set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves.
What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can’t run away from themselves.
Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.
Rating:
Review:
This book is a fictionalized version of a real event. The couple, their shipwreck and their time at sea are all a real event that happened in their lives. This book makes a fictionalized narrative of their journal entries and interviews after being rescued.
Initially I was very drawn into the story. Learning how Maurice and Maralyn met, fell in love and got married was really fun and a sweet story. Soon they got a little bored with domestic life. Maurice is a strong introvert and wanted to escape to the open sea. Maralyn is more social but she wanted a life of adventure, not just to live her entire life in their small English town. So they save all their money, build a boat, and set off to explore the world.
I loved all the stories of their time at sea before the shipwreck. Watching their dynamic and the interactions they had with other seagoers was a lot of fun. Frankly I don’t think I ever realized that there’s people out there who just sail the world’s oceans. That’s how they live their lives. They might meet and spend a few days getting to know a new friend but eventually they are off on the next leg of their journey and might never see them again. Or maybe they’ll see them at the next port, it’s impossible to say. That sounds fascinating to me though I recognize that I could never do it. I love the ocean and I love the water. But I get a deep, primal fear at the idea of water that I can’t see the bottom of. So, this is never a lifestyle that would appeal to me but it was fun to read about it.
The shipwreck was the most exciting part of the book. Maralyn and Maurice watching a pod of whales off the bow of their boat. Suddenly a whale breaches near them and splinters their boat. They quickly realize that they can’t save the ship and turn their attention to putting as many vital supplies as they can in their lifeboat and wooden dinghy. After that it becomes a story of hope and survival. It’s an emotion and agonizing journey to take with them. They see ships and get their hopes up for rescue only to watch them sail onward without seeing them. They figure out how to get food only for a storm to swamp all of their supplies with seawater and they have to throw it all out. It was heartbreaking to read.
Unfortunately that portion of the book got repetitive and a bit dull. Naturally their days were quite repetitive: drink, eat, get new food, protect yourself from the elements. There isn’t anything else to do when you’re stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Because this section was naturally going to be repetitive I feel like it could have been a lot shorter. It dragged on and on. I got really bored and thought about quitting early. But I wanted to see if they both survived, so I persevered.
I also wish that we had spent longer on what happens to the couple after they are rescued. Compared to the really long and boring middle, this section was very short. I wanted to know more about their recovery and how they lived out the rest of their days. In total, that’s why I gave this book three stars. There were parts that were great but a lot of parts that were dull. Overall though, it was a nice and interesting read.