Customer Reviews

The Cure for Anything Is Salt Water: How I Threw My Life Overboard and Found Happiness at Sea

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What a great book. I started it a few nights ago and I can't put it down. I don't know a thing about boating, but I've dreamed of doing something similar to this for years -- just quitting my job and following my dream. She's so honest, she makes it seem possible for anyone to just go out and make it happen. Some parts are so funny that I keep waking up my husband from laughing so hard. I'm going to give this book to all my friends for their birthdays.

A great story of an inquisitive mind looking for fulfillment by jumping ship on the present cruise of life to start a Voyangege to renew and continue a successful life by taking a different boat. The amount of courage taken to attempt such a change is no less than a trip through space, but this is down home and shows us the challenge we each have in our own back yard. So well written we can all identify with the exposure of her life and its honesty. The book brings you onboard and makes you want your innermost thoughts to come to life as you travel along with her adventure.

Mary South writes a realistic and honest depiction of her experiences at sea. I would dare say that most of us don't have the tanacity and courage to do the same. I didn't want to put it down. Even read it aloud to my husband on a road trip. You go girl! Would like to read more of Mary South!

JMG Houston Texas

The Cure for Anything Is Salt Water: How I Threw My Life Overboard and Found Happiness at Sea

As a reader whose only experience with boats is a few crossings on the Staten Island Ferry, I still found myself hooked from the beginning of THE CURE FOR ANYTHING IS SALT WATER. Not only because it is a very funny book and a great story about leaving corporate life for the sea, but also because of the sharp reflections on the impermanent yet invaluable aspects of life and relationships.

Helen Ward, Brooklyn, NY

This book is a testimonial to the concept that we can create our own possibilities. If you are looking for the confidence to pursue your own dream, The Cure for Anything provides one ordinary woman's account of how to pursue the extraordinary.

In addition to being inspirational, the book is extremely witty (it made me laugh out loud a couple of times)and filled with interesting tidbits and true gems of wisdom. And along with all the troubles and trevails at sea that Ms. South shares with us is a love story with all the twists and turns that only real life can hold.

This has become one of my favourite books of all time.

I enjoyed Mary's story VERY much. I was surprised to learn she had been a book editor because I was distracted in the beginning chapters by many sentence fragments and run-on "sentences". I learned it was bad form, if not poor grammar to begin a sentence with the word "And". I was also confused at some points while trying to follow the story line: Mary skipped the family Thanksgiving for a warm weather trip South...but later in the story, she claims to have visited her aging grandmother in upstate New York over that same Thanksgiving? Maybe I'm reading too literally. I greatly admire her spirit of adventure and her courage in sharing her emotional life with us. I'm left wondering, though: what if Lars had invited her to sail to Europe? Would she have accepted that challenge/invitation?

Be sure to have plenty of time when you start reading this book because you won't want to put it down! Ms South writes in such a way that you can picture what she is writing as if you were standing next to her experiencing what she did. If you've ever had a dream of living a different life you can live that dream vicariously through this book. I would recommend this book to everyone!!!

I continue to find that first time novelist are the best and Mary South is no exception. She is an excellent writer with a compelling story to share with us all. I could see myself having a similar adventure and laughed along with her. A good read.

Perhaps I should have done more homework. The book I read wasn't exactly the book that I thought I had bought. The subtitle, "How I Threw My Life Overboard and Found Happiness at Sea" gives a pretty good clue, though. There are essentially two parts to this book. The first is the story of a woman who experiences a mid-life crisis at work and in relationships, and goes forth to seek true happiness. The second is the story of this same woman looking for that happiness in buying a boat and going to sea. I had thought the book was really more the latter, but the story turns out to be more the former.

THE CURE FOR ANYTHING IS SALT WATER is competently written, as one should expect from a former book editor. The book is interesting, and the story told without artifice. When Mary South tells of her sudden, almost irrational interest in boats while living well inland in Pennsylvania, her experience will strike a chord with every boatstruck reader. But South's book is not likely to meet the needs of the boat or sailing enthusiast. It's not that she doesn't take her newfound interest seriously--nobody who quits her job and sells her house to buy a boat should be regarded as simply a dilettante (even if she doesn't take traditional methods of navigation seriously)--it's just that she doesn't write about boating with much passion beyond her love for her particular boat. What should be the centerpiece of the book, her voyage up the Eastern Seaboard, is reduced to a series of good days, bad weather, mishaps, bars, and some occasional local color. When it comes to boating, her prose fails to capture the poetry of the experience.

The reader learns that the real point of this book is to describe Mary South's midlife crisis, in particular, her losing interest in her career as a book editor and her being troubled by a lack of permanence in her intimate relationships. This in itself might be the clay from which a story might be shaped, but the effort falls short, clodlike. South, despite her humorous turns, tends towards the ad hominem comment: "My boss was a micromanager with an imagination that was significantly smaller than the stick up her butt" (p. 5). A Christian school administrator of the boating school South attends makes her wonder "what kind of crackpot school I had committed myself to"; this is followed by a rather poor joke on theodicy (p. 35). A boating classmate is described as a very intelligent guy "though a smart Republican is an oxymoronic concept to me" (p. 56). When an elderly couple out rowing express concern for the author's dogs, they are disdainfully dismissed as "Biff" and "Muffy" (p. 176). South's tendency towards personal attack, combined with her refrain of seeking isolation on her boat, leads one to think she's a misanthrope. But here's the thing: I don't think she is; she just gravitates to ridicule as a literary tool of humor. However you slice it, though, it's not very appealing.

In the last part of the book, South, who describes herself as a lesbian, discusses her surprising affair with a man. Her boat at this point is but a piece of inconvenient furniture. You may, like me, find yourself at this point happy that your voyage with South is nearly over.

On the surface, The Cure For Anything Is Salt Water is about a fantastic voyage, fraught with risk and full of excitement. But for me, it was really about trying to make sense of your life so far, especially when it comes to love. By sharing her own true stories of childhood, family, relationships and work -- interspersed with Perfect Storm-like adventure -- Mary South makes you think about your own emotional life and try to find peace with the journey so far. Whether you are an aspiring mariner, a hopeless romantic or a wandering soul, Salt Water is a funny, heartfelt book that will help you find your own inner compass.