Marine Life

“As seamless as a fine piece of music,” linked stories of a dysfunctional working-class family are “effortlessly held together by [a] strong, clear voice” (The New York Times).

Adele Nordstrom is more than just the youngest child of June, a cocktail lounge pianist who has weathered three marriages just to avoid being alone. Adele is also the artless, perceptive, deeply affecting lens through which acclaimed author Linda Svendsen reveals the lives of a Vancouver family as shattered by love as they are held together by it. With humor and poignancy, Adele tells stories about her half-brother Ray, a hard-drinking longshoreman who moves from one short-lived relationship to another. Then there’s Adele’s half-sister, Joyce, who walks away from a too-young marriage she may never recover from, while her half-sister Irene has committed to a life and a man who may just get the best of her in the end. Over the course of eight stories, Adele navigates the complexities of familial bonds, and of finding love and keeping it “with such clear precision that her sentences adopt us. They pull us into the family, though we can see it more clearly than any family member can” (Los Angeles Times Book Review).

“[Svendsen’s] stories are stunning.” —Alice Munro, Nobel Prize in Literature–winning author of Dear Life

“It is hard to imagine that writing can be better than this.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“Svendsen’s prose is tender and simple, her language whispering lessons that need not be shouted.” —The Boston Globe

“Marine Life is small but remarkably faceted, a cut gem that catches the light at any angle you hold it.” —The Washington Post Book World