Marine Life

Toronto: Harpercollins. Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. 1992. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. 0002238896 . Only slight wear ; A bright, solid book DJ in protective Mylar sleeve, unclipped. ; 0.9 x 8.6 x 5.7 Inches; 165 pages; When it was first published in 1992, Linda Svendsen’s Marine Life was welcomed with exceptional reviews on both sides of the border. The eight seamlessly interwoven stories charted the longings, pleasures and terrors of Adele Nordstrom, a child who looks unsparingly at the failures of her family, and as an adult is destined to repeat them. Now these powerful stories have beentransformed into a film, directed by Anne Wheeler and starring Cybil Shepherd, making its debut in May 2000 at the Cannes Film Festival.Adele is the baby of the family, the afterthought and nearly invisible presence amid a crumbling domestic empire. She is doggedly devoted to her family: her womanizing brother, Ray, her self-destructive sister, Joyce, and her mother, June, a cocktail pianist who believes that a bad marriage is better than no marriage at all.Through the watchful and sometimes astonished eyes of Adele, Linda Svendsen paints a tender, piercing portrait of a girl growing up, capturing with perfect clarity the intensity of love, hate and pain in a contemporary family. .