Seeking to escape their quotidian middle-class suburban life, Maurice, a 42-year old socially-awkward printer, and Maralyn, a 31-year old clerk in the tax office, decided on a life at sea, the first stage a sail to New Zealand.

They made new friends in harbours, partied at yacht clubs, endured calm, boring days and violent storms — coming up from the cabin one morning, Maralyn found 27 flying fish strewn on the deck. 

  After passing through the Panama Canal — pulled through the locks by a large container ship, ‘a small dog, easily stepped on, trotting after its master’ — they were some 325 miles from the Galapagos, three days sailing at their usual rate.

At 7 AM, Maralyn having finished her watch, climbed down into the cabin to wake Maurice. There was a sudden jolt, the sound of gun going off. “The noise split the air. Books leapt off the shelves. Cutlery flew.” A wounded sperm whale had breached near them. Maurice guessed it was 40 feet long, a good 10 feet longer than their boat.

Maralyn took a picture as the tip of the mast disappeared beneath the surface, their boat sinking to the bottom of the ocean, where the whale had also gone to die.

They launched their dinghy and life raft, loading what they could on to it – passports, a camera, torch, two books, two dictionaries, Maurice’s Nautical Almanac, sextant, compass; and most importantly as many fresh water containers as they could. To save water, they sucked the moisture from the flesh of the fish.

Maralyn made fishing hooks from safety pins. While trying to land a heavy fish for a celebratory meal on her birthday, the fish wrenched free, the hook catapulted back into the rubber of the dinghy. They heard the ‘high, lethal hiss of air.’ [117]

Maralyn wrote in her diary, letters to a friend, which she was certain would never be sent. She kept lists, planned dinner-party menus, designed dresses, doodles of cats. ‘Is it possible to write yourself out of loneliness,’ the author asks in one of the book’s philosophical musings. 

They caught turtles, eating their congealed blood, kidney, livers, heart, greenish fat. “I’ll never eat turtle again after this escapade,’ Maralyn wrote. Both more determined to survive and practical in how to, Maralyn came up with an idea — instead of eating the turtles, harness them, ropes over their rear flippers, and it let the turtles pull them to the Galapagos, a roman chariot, across the ocean. Turns out turtles have ‘minds of their own,’ and began swimming in the opposite direction. 

Sharks swam close enough to pet. Maralyn wrestled them on board, and killed them, for food.

While he despaired, she kept going, optimistically. They spotted ships on the horizon. On her mother’s birthday, Maralyn imagined the celebration when she sent a telegram that they had been rescued. They waved, shot off makeshift flares. The ship kept going.

After three weeks alone on the vast sea, “Maurice’s skeleton seemed to be trying to find a way out of his body. Maralyn could count his ribs. Their faces were beginning to ache where their skulls were pushing through taut skin.’

In the United States, the book’s title is A Marriage at Sea: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love. (It’s unclear why the title was changed in Australia). It was one of The New York Times top five non-fiction books of 2025. The New Yorker also selected it as one of the best books of the year. “An enthralling account of a partnership in extremis, and of how the commonest hazards of married life – claustrophobia, codependence, boundarylessness – become totalized amid disaster,” reads The New Yorker summary. 

Totally engrossing, lyrically written, as I read, I often found myself thinking of “Man’s Search for Meaning.” How do you keep going in the face of almost certain death.

— Ray

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