In these fluidly interwoven stories, Linda Svendsen charts— with tenderness and devastating accuracy— the longings, pleasures, and terrors of belonging to a family. Through the watchful and sometimes astonished eyes of Adele Nordstrom, we view the members of her chaotic, working-class home in Vancouver: 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.

Svendsen's book 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. A major motion picture based on Marine Life, directed by the award-winning Anne Wheeler and starring Cybill Shepherd, was released in 2000.