Skip to main content

"Love with a Chance of Drowning" by Torre DeRoche



As the “Amazing Grace” sets sail for a voyage to the South Seas, Torre DeRoche looks down and contemplates one of her toenails. It bears a remnant fleck of nail polish, a last shred of her former life as a two-feet-firmly-on-terra-firma graphic artist from Australia about to embark upon a life at sea. Until this point, DeRoche’s greatest adventure has been to leave her big, boisterous family in Australia for what was meant to be a three hour tour—whoops-year—in San Francisco.

But when Torre meets Ivan, an Argentinean IT project manager with an unwavering dream of sailing the South Pacific, her best laid plans go through the proverbial porthole. Soon enough, DeRoche takes the plunge, with anxiety, humour and a darn-good putty-knife.

Some days are better than others en route to French Polynesia. Postcard sunsets and unspoiled tropical islands are interspersed by knocking about in squalls, seasickness so severe it has Torre bunk-ridden for days or bailing a bilge that fills faster than it drains. And while Ivan is not exactly Gilligan, he’s about as accident-prone as they come. No sooner has Torre patched him up from one mishap than he’s gone on to the next one and coco-bonked himself all over again.

Love With a Chance of Drowning acts out many a marine metaphor for relationships as Torre and Ivan take theirs all the way from smooth sailing to choppy waters right up to on the rocks. There they land, stronger, wiser, and, at least in Torre’s case, confident that a person can be fearful, funny and adventurous all in one.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Indian Horse" by Richard Wagamese

“You go somewhere when you’re on the ice,”  Virgil said to me after one practice.  “It’s like watching you walk into a secret place  that no one else knows how to get to.” Hockey is the saving grace of young Saul Indian Horse’s life. Lost to his family and orphaned in his grandmother’s arms, eight-year-old Saul is discovered at an icy railroad stop in northern Ontario and stolen away to spend the next six years at St. Jerome’s Indian Residential School. “St. Jerome’s took all the light from my world,” Saul remembers. He saw children die of abuse or suicide, with whatever they had to take themselves away from hell on earth: a pitchfork; rocks to weigh down a dress in water; rope to swing from the rafters of a barn. Anything, even death, was better than the despair of suffering the school’s daily humiliations. It is a hockey ice rink, built at St. Jerome’s during Saul’s second winter, that saves him. In the years that follow, the crack of light o...
35 comments
Read more

Leave Your Mark: Land Your Dream Job. Kill It In Your Career. Rock Social Media. by Aliza Licht

In the digital age, could success be just a tweet or two away? Probably not. Take it from Aliza Licht, senior vice president of global communications at Donna Karan International, a clear career path, perseverance, and passion matter as much as they ever did. It’s just that how to make (or break) a career online (“killing it” works both ways) is now an essential part of understanding the wired world of work. Licht has plenty to draw upon in Leave Your Mark: Land Your Dream Job. Kill it in Your Career. Rock Social Media. It took a detour out of med school and into fashion, first as a magazine intern and eventually up to the executive suite, for Licht to find her own brand within a brand and build a following more than half-a-million strong. The author and creator of DKNY PR GIRL® knows from experience that no matter how sharp and snappy your tweets, it’s sustaining a start-up spirit that counts more. Going above and beyond (think spending your unpaid weekends sorting shoe inve...
11 comments
Read more

"The Game of Life" by Rosalys Buckles Thorndike Wilson

“The game of life has been enjoyable and rewarding, and I have competed to the best of my ability.”—from The Game of Life by Rosalys Buckles Thorndyke Wilson A long life, as Rosalys “Rosie” Buckles Thorndike Wilson looks back upon it, is like a basketball game. It’s played in four quarters (a sport she learned growing up in rural Indiana, where all you needed was a was a hoop on a wall and a ball that had some bounce) with a little time-out in between. Rosie’s first quarter started out on a small, 20-acre farm near Etna, Indiana. Baths were taken once-a-week in a galvanized tub in front of the kitchen wood stove. There were the requisite chores including chasing down dinner (which, on a fried chicken night, involved catching and decapitating a hen before dipping it quickly in boiling water and then plucking off all its feathers). There was a pony named “Beauty”; “Fluffy” the long-haired cat; “Spot” the rat terrier; “Fuzzy” the baby raccoon and “Duke” a horse retired by the U.S...
7 comments
Read more