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Overview
A stunning follow-up from the author of Salt—"thrilling and memorable" (Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times).
After experiencing a devastating tragedy, Guy sets out to sea in an old Dutch barge that has now become his home. Every night, he writes the imagined diary of the man he might have been-and the family he should have had.
As he embarks upon the stormy waters of the North Sea-writing about a trip through the small towns and nightclubs of the rural American South-Guy's stories begin to unfold in unexpected ways. And when he meets a mother and daughter, he realizes that it might just be possible to begin his life again.
Haunting and exquisitely crafted, Sea Change is a deeply affecting novel of love and family by an acclaimed young writer.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Page (Salt) provides a fresh perspective on parallel lives in his latest novel about life after the death of a child in a seaside English town. Five years after the loss of his young daughter, Guy is living alone on a boat drifting aimlessly about the North Sea. His world is far from uninhabited, however, as the characters of his diary swirl about his mind. He writes about what could have been, imagining a life where his daughter is still alive and accompanying her still-married mother and father on a road trip through America. Interestingly, domestic bliss doesn't permeate the fantasy; the tale is wracked with drama and familial discord. As Guy teeters between two lives, the thin line of reality becomes very hard for him to discern. He struggles to find answers in both the endless sea and vast imagined stretches of America, and eventually comes into contact with another family, also reeling from loss, which gives rise to the possibility of stability and comfort. With lyricism and poise, Page renders a doubly engaging story, with one narrative as intricate and essential as the other. (Dec.)Kirkus Reviews
A lyrical and elegiac novel about a real past and an imagined future.
A family tragedy forces Guy, the main character, to relocate on an old Dutch ship, the Flood, a 90-foot coastal barge on which he lives. The tragedy occurs when Guy, his wife Judy and his young daughter Freya are picnicking in a field on a "perfect" day. Something freakish and unimaginable happens—a loose stallion wildly attacks them and tramples Freya. Three months after, after they come close to completing a double suicide out of despair, this incident leads to the breakup of Guy and Judy's marriage. Guy spends the next five years of his life roaming about the North Sea area on the Flood. Each night he lovingly crafts a fantasy life in his diary, imagining himself into the life that might have been had Freya not died and his marriage not collapsed. Page (Salt, 2007) alternates his narrative between Guy's dismal present—the cold, damp, windy and occasionally treacherous conditions of life on the sea—and the deeply personal imaginative projection of the life-that-might-have-been, including a trip across America and a Nashville recording session for Judy. His life on the ship is complicated when he meets Marta, an attractive woman with a gorgeous 22-year-old daughter, Rhona. Both women are attracted to Guy, but he finds himself in a curious chronological limbo, for he's ten years younger than Marta and 15 years older than her daughter. Both relationships verge on the sexual but never quite get there. Meanwhile, in Guy's diary all is not well, for Judy begins an affair with Phil, a musician who'd played in a folk band with both Guy and Judy—and it turns out that Guy's imagined version of events mirrors what actually happens in his life.
In this impressive novel, Page is at home on the estuaries around the North Sea, on a journey across America and in the lonely spaces in family relationships.