The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, and a Woman’s Search for the Meaning of Life by Janna Cawrse Esarey

Release date: 2009 / 306 pages

Synopsis (from back cover): Choosing a mate is like picking house paint from one of those tiny color squares: You never know how it will look across a large expanse, or how it will change in different light.  Meet Janna and Graeme.  After a decade-long tango (together, apart, together, apart), they’re back in love — but the stress of nine-to-five is seriously hampering their happiness.  So, they quit their jobs, tie the knot, and untie the lines on a beat-up old sailboat for a most unusual honeymoon: a two-year voyage across the Pacific.

First lines: “Somewhere fifty miles off the coast of Oregon I realize the skipper of this very small ship is an asshole.  He also happens to be my husband.”

Review:  At the beginning of June, I posted a list of 50 Summer Memoirs and placed a little star next to the ones I wanted to check out.  Happily, fortuitously, Janna Cawrse Esarey saw my hopeful little star and offered a copy of her memoir for me to read!  What a gift – and I’m so happy to share this refreshing journey with others!

The summary above does justice to the gist of this memoir, but not to Janna’s “voice” — and I hope that she does not mind if I refer to her as “Janna.”  By the end of her journey, you can’t help but know her intimately.  And, more importantly, I really do not want to rock the “Name Change Dilemma” boat after this issue was finally resolved!

Janna’s voice is smart, reflective, honest, and very funny.  Janna loves words and this is so apparent in how she chooses just the right one and then plays with it in a thoroughly accessible, yet original way.  Before embarking on the seven seas, Janna was an English teacher and perfectly summed up my own experiences of teaching on page 8: “I thought I could change the world one student at a time.  And while the efficacy and advisability of this scheme is highly debatable, I passionately loved my job.  I just didn’t love the person I’d become through my job: a harried, perfectionist, martyring workaholic.”  While I decided to start a website and embark on the less stressful world of online teaching, Janna decided to brave her first two years of marriage on the high seas, and fortunately shares this experience.

Now, I recently figured out my perfect formula for a perfectly satisfying memoir: the writer must likeable (or, if not, then incredibly interesting and/or witty), the writing must be strong, and I need to gain insight into not only the author, but myself as well.  The Motion of the Ocean satisfied all three of these guidelines beautifully.  Despite my affinity for Janna’s teaching personality, we are actually quite different in many ways.  I would NEVER sail around the world — or want to.  I’m not terribly reflective, really.  I have no desire to write fiction.  And I really do not examine my marriage beyond being fundamentally grateful I finally met such a good fit.

However, it is truly fascinating to read about what it would be like to live on a sailboat for two years.  And from the very beginning I was pulling for Janna and Graeme — as sailors, as friends, as spouses, as individuals.  Spending 300 pages with this couple is truly a joy as well as a journey, an escape, a vacation.  I do think an element in enjoying this memoir lies in appreciating Janna’s wit and sensibility, but I also think she would appeal to a large cross-section of individuals, too.

As I was reading, I did not pause to mark certain passages for my review since there were so many funny, clever, quirky bits to choose from.  However, as I hunt for a paragraph to demonstrate Janna’s prose, I notice that any passage is difficult to take out of context.  One of reasons we know Janna by the end is a result of how she circles back and deftly references previous stories and memories.  So, I will include this bit from the prologue, describing how Janna and Graeme met (this follows her explanation of why her skipper/husband is an asshole), to present a small sampling of her voice:

“Now you may wonder how two individuals, with their attention so diverted from each other, could end up in a boat together. Crossing the Pacific. As their honeymoon. But there was a time when this man could pay attention to little else but me. And his gaze was like the sun.

Of course, he was barely a man back then, more a walking, talking sack of testosterone. It was college, I was playing pool, and he was propping up the beer-stained wall of a party-packed basement. He says it was love at first sight. I — an insecure freshman with a recessive gumline, low-grade acne, bowed legs, and a penchant for serious intellectual inquiry — say it was love at first beer goggle. Either way, beer goggle translated to lust, lust turned into love, and I had that boy’s full attention.

Until a year later, when I didn’t. At which point he broke my heart. Frayed it. Splayed it. Twisted and burned it. Like a seaman splicing a line…” (xvii-xviii)

Now, if you too would like to set sail with Janna and Graeme…  simply leave me a comment!  I’ll choose a winner by Saturday!

Welcome back!