Amity Gaige

"Sea Wife is a gripping tale of survival at sea--but that's just the beginning. Amity Gaige also manages, before she's done, to probe the underpinnings of romantic love, marriage, literary ambition, political inclinations in the Trump age, parenthood, and finally, the nature of survival itself in our broken world. Gaige is thrillingly talented, and her novel enchants." --Jennifer Egan "Sea Wife brilliantly breathes life not only into the perils of living at sea, but also into the fraught and hidden dangers of domesticity, motherhood, and marriage. What a smart, swift, and thrilling novel." --Lauren Groff From the highly acclaimed author of Schroder, a smart, sophisticated page literary page-turner about a young family who escape suburbia for a yearlong sailing trip that upends all of their lives. Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. 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. The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given a gust of energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being feral children at sea. Despite the stresses of being novice sailors, the family learns to crew the boat together on the ever-changing sea. The vast horizons and isolated islands offer Juliet and Michael reprieve - until they are tested by the unforeseen. 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 life-changing events that unfolded at sea, and Michael's captain's log, which provides a riveting, slow-motion account of these same inexorable events, a dialogue that reveals the fault lines created by personal history and political divisions. Sea Wife is a transporting novel about marriage, family and love in a time of unprecedented turmoil. It is unforgettable in its power and astonishingly perceptive in its portrayal of optimism, disillusionment, and survival.

Sea Wife

Ensconced in a correctional facility at the height of a custody battle with his estranged wife, Eric, a first-generation East German immigrant who changed his name as a youth, surveys his life to consider the disparity between his original and assumed identities.

A Novel

Schroder

La sposa del mare

A novel

Compelled by his comparatively privileged life to work with the mentally ill, idealistic young social worker Charlie Shade enters the lives of hopelessly superstitious Alice, psychotic wrestler Hal, and isolated young Opal, people for whom he risks his private life and family in order to help. By the author of O My Darling.

The Folded World

Unter uns das Meer

A lyrical and deeply affecting novel recounting the seven days a father spends on the road with his daughter after kidnapping her during a parental visit. Attending a New England summer camp, young Eric Schroder-a first-generation East German immigrant-adopts the last name Kennedy to more easily fit in, a fateful white lie that will set him on an improbable and ultimately tragic course. SCHRODER relates the story of Eric's urgent escape years later to Lake Champlain, Vermont, with his six-year-old daughter, Meadow, in an attempt to outrun the authorities amid a heated custody battle with his wife, who will soon discover that her husband is not who he says he is. From a correctional facility, Eric surveys the course of his life to understand-and maybe even explain-his behavior: the painful separation from his mother in childhood; a harrowing escape to America with his taciturn father; a romance that withered under a shadow of lies; and his proudest moments and greatest regrets as a flawed but loving father. Alternately lovesick and ecstatic, Amity Gaige's deftly imagined novel offers a profound meditation on history and fatherhood, and the many identities we take on in our lives--those we are born with and those we construct for ourselves.

Poems and photographs present images of both fact and fancy

We Are a Thunderstorm

The external lives of Clark, a high school guidance counselor, and Charlotte, a bookkeeper, are utterly ordinary, but their interior lives are as bold and complex as abstract paintings colored by imagined possibilities, childhood joys and, more darkly, by deeply buried fears. When Clark rescues a young boy from drowning, a chain of events-some comic, some harrowing-is set in motion, revealing the fault lines of the couple's marriage and individual psyches. Amity Gaige is a consummate stylist. Her every sentence contains a tiny world-marrying striking images to deep, soulful ideas in perfectly concise fashion.

O My Darling

De nieuwe roman van de bestsellerauteur van Schroder. Juliet heeft moeite het ouderschap te combineren met het voltooien van haar proefschrift. Dan kondigt haar echtgenoot Michael aan dat hij zijn baan gaat opzeggen en een zeilboot wil kopen om de wereld mee rond te varen. Hoewel het stel nauwelijks ervaring heeft met zeilen, vertrekken ze met hun twee kinderen, Sybil van zeven en George van twee, naar Panama. Daar ligt de Juliet, zoals Michael de boot gedoopt heeft, op hen te wachten. De reis begint fantastisch: het huwelijk van Michael en Juliet krijgt een boost en ook de kinderen zijn overdonderd door het avontuur en de schoonheid van de natuur. Maar de zee en het dicht op elkaar leven zorgen ook voor problemen in het gezin. In lyrisch proza schetst Gaige een onvergetelijk portret van een familie die aan het wankelen wordt gebracht door het gewicht van het verleden en de uitdagingen in het heden. In de pers ‘Gaige bouwt de spanning fraai op in deze roman op zee.’ de Volkskrant ‘Gaige excelleert in het voelbaar laten oplopen van de spanning tussen de echtelieden.’ Het Parool **** ‘Gaige is een kei in het blootleggen van de krachten in lange relaties, van intimiteit en vervreemding.’ De Standaard **** ‘Geweldig boek!’ De Limburger ‘De vorige roman van Gaige, Schröder, vonden we zeven jaar geleden al zeer de moeite waard en ook dit scheeps- en huwelijksdrama boeit vanaf het eerste hoofdstuk.’ VPRO Gids

Amity Gaige

About

Books

Join the club