Reviews tagging 'Terminal illness'

Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

117 reviews

axel_p's review against another edition

challenging emotional mysterious relaxing medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Death, Eating disorder, Grief, Confinement, Gaslighting, Death of parent, Suicide, Terminal illness, Body horror, Chronic illness, and Vomit

erdbeerelias's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I really loved the way it’s written, especially the recalling of memories by both characters. It took me some time to get into it but by the time I fully understood that it’s like their journals I was okay with not knowing everything that happens.
Still there were some things in the communication of the characters that annoyed me. 

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Death of parent, and Terminal illness

Minor: Suicide and Chronic illness

jess_vitale's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A

4.0

Mysterious and somewhat frustrating in the end. I preferred to read Leah's chapters for the plot moving forward, but the juxtaposition with Miri's story made it more interesting and provided wider context for both. I found the writing style very effective at immersing you in the feeling and atmosphere of both points of view, but the claustrophobic, isolated, and haunting experience in the submarine came through particularly well.
I'm not sure how this book could have ended in a satisfying manner but ultimately I did not find it to be so. I never understood what happened to them under the sea, and would have preferred it without the giant creature at the end which seemed like a partial attempt at an answer.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Terminal illness, Injury/Injury detail, and Body horror

Moderate: Suicide

thebigemmt505's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

“I want whoever reads this to understand what they’re getting, which is mainly confusion, because I don’t know how to be clear about any of this.” 

Our Wives Under The Sea follows a couple, Leah and Miri, trying to (or, well, not really trying to) navigate life after Leah comes back from a submarine expedition gone awry. Typically, in a review, I’d first explain all the positives that stand out to me in a book- of which there are… some. The premise is immensely intriguing and there are beautiful descriptions throughout much of the novel. There’s plenty of purposeful mystique around what happened to Leah and why she refuses to talk about it. The treatment of grief, as long as it takes, is ultimately tragic as it is poignant. The clever moments are clever, with symbols and motifs that recur in a way that makes the pattern recognition in one’s brain go “oh, right, cool!” My snark has kicked in already though, and I must unfortunately explain why this book massively disappointed me. 

It’s underwhelming. The book slogs through long chapters of Miri droning on about ultimately irrelevant information, interspersed with tiny chapters that hint at the strange and horrifying nature of Leah’s expedition. The theme is obviously all about grief, its tears stained across each page Miri talks about distracting herself, living on autopilot, trying to grieve someone still alive in the bath next to her. It’s unfortunately only at the end of the book that this works. Everything before mimics the feeling of a slow drip of water on my forehead, startling me as I try to keep my eyes open for another chapter of Miri explaining the same day she’s had four times over. When something finally does happen, it’s skipped, and Miri simply does not explain or acknowledge anything going on. It’s absolutely infuriating to read. Grief is hollow of but that doesn’t mean writing about it has to be equally empty. 

How about the characters themselves? There is, of course, plenty of reminiscing about Miri and Leah’s relationship, which might’ve been sweet if not for the fact the writing made me want to drown myself. To elaborate, if the characterization of characters in a piece of media relies only on the other media they consume, the characters are not well written. There are moments in these scenes where it’s multiple sentences full of cultural references to the point I never got to know the characters as anything more than a list of interests and attributes told plainly and never shown organically. The characters never grow to feel like characters, the plot never fleshes out to feel like a plot, and all of the talent in between the lines of this novel is drained away, ineffective, because of these two facts. 

To put aside my crassness, there is lots of potential here. When the author isn’t trying too hard to be clever, or impressive, or knowledgeable, she has a talent for everything emotional. If this had been a short story where the last quarter took up half of the book, I’d be giving this a much higher rating. I’m genuinely saddened I didn’t enjoy this one. 

At the end of the day, Our Wives Under The Sea is that empty abyss at the bottom of the ocean. As Leah says when the lights finally do turn on in that submarine, all I could think reading this book was “come on, give.” 

Give it a read if you want. I might just be a cunt. Frankly, though, I think Iron Lung accomplished what this book meant to (minus all of the grief) in about 30-40 minutes of gameplay maximum. (If you know, you know.) 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief

Minor: Body horror, Death, and Terminal illness

maeverose's review against another edition

mysterious sad

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.0

I’m unsure how I feel about this yet.

TL;DR: As other people have said, this isn’t so much horror as a book about grief with horror sprinkled throughout. I was interested to see what would happen the whole way through and I do tend to like books about grief, but in the end am left feeling overall ‘meh’ about the book.

A note on the horror elements for those worried about it:
If you’re especially bothered by body horror, gore, or themes of going insane I would go in prepared for that if you plan on reading it. I’m not a horror reader and I dislike reading those themes, but most of this book was fine for me (check my content warnings section for which parts to skip if you also dislike these themes but want to read anyway. You can’t really skip the ‘going insane’ stuff unless you just don’t read any of Leah’s chapters, but you’d be missing out on some parts of the story then). That being said, you know what your own limits are best. I have a moderate tolerance for gore in books and I’m rarely bothered by non-gory body horror. If you have a low tolerance overall, I’d probably skip it.

        Now on to my thoughts:
(Vague/minor plot spoilers, but not really since this is not a plot-focused book)

I liked the way the Centre was depicted as this mysterious corporate entity, and wish that was explored more, as well as

the whole sea creature thing

. I get that the horror and mystery elements aren’t the focus, the focus is on Miri’s grief, with the horror elements being a metaphorical parallel to losing a loved one to illness. But it’s left somewhat unclear whether or not it’s also actually happening. If it is actually happening, then that leaves me a bit frustrated with how Miri acted. She seemed so uninterested in finding answers or taking any sort of legal action against the Centre. At no point does the idea even come up to do that, and that seems so ridiculous to me given everything they kept quiet about and the entire way they acted and operated. If I were Miri I’d be pissed at them. I’d be demanding answers. She pretty much gave up after they stopped responding to her calls. I didn’t understand why she never took Leah to a doctor, especially given how much she obviously cares about her, why wasn’t she doing everything she could to help her?

When Juna met up with Miri and tried to explain what she found out and Miri cut her off and left, I was so annoyed. She seemed so uninterested in what Juna had to say and I would be the exact opposite. She didn’t seem at all shocked to learn that someone died on the same trip her wife was on…

In general Miri seemed much more focused on her own grief rather than being concerned for her wife who clearly went through an extremely traumatic experience. Again, if none of it is really real then it makes sense but with it being somewhat left up to interpretation, it was frustrating.

On that note, I’ll end with some quotes about grieving missing loved ones that I liked:

“-grieving was complicated by lack of certainty, that the hope inherent in a missing loved one was also a species of curse.”

“In almost every case, the sense of loss was convoluted by an ache of possibility, by the almost-but-not-quite-negligible hope of reprieve.”

“Grief is selfish: we cry for ourselves without the person we have lost far more than we cry for the person - but more than that, we cry because it helps. The grief process is also the coping process and if the grief is frozen by ambiguity, by the constant possibility of reversal, then so is the ability to cope.”

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Gore, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicide, Terminal illness, Body horror, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Death, and Dementia

Moderate: Sexual content, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Death of parent, Eating disorder, Vomit, Cancer, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Lesbophobia and Fatphobia

There are depictions of people gradually losing their mind in confinement,

resulting in a suicide for one of them.

As for the gore: the worst of it (for me) was a description of an old norse torture method in chapter 4. Chapter 4 is entirely skippable if you want to avoid that, or just skip the first paragraph. Second is the eye trauma scene. If you wanna skip that, it’s the last paragraph of the last chapter in the Abyssal zone section (really wish the chapters were numbered lol). Besides that there is still body horror throughout, most of which isn’t exactly gory but some is.

likeagilmoregirl's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Sitting at around 50% sapphic romance and 50% literary horror, this book explores the depths (intentional pun) of grief and loss. 
I fell in love with this story very early on and it did not disappoint. 
Be sure to check trigger warnings before reading. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Body horror, Terminal illness, Grief, and Death

Moderate: Death of parent

sapphotoni's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness, Death, and Grief

ashavila1's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book captivated me from the beginning. Julia Armfield does an amazing job of creating a tense, rich atmosphere to explore themes relating to love, horror, decay, and memory throughout the story. I often found myself being so immersed in the story, I would need several minutes afterwards to recompose from the intensity of this book's grasp. This story falls along the lines of an intense study of character, grief, and love wherein the plot is pushed by internal reflection. This isn't going to be a book for everyone. It's intense and fueled by the atmosphere and it's themes. But if you're looking for heart wrenching sapphic romance with a touch of horror, this is an extraordinary book. Highly recommend for fans of gothic horror, mysteries, and tragic lesbians trying their best. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Grief

Moderate: Chronic illness

Minor: Sexual content, Medical trauma, Terminal illness, Suicide, Panic attacks/disorders, Death, Vomit, Self harm, and Lesbophobia

fatherprozac's review against another edition

challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This reminded me so much of "The Rememberer" by Amiee Bender, one of my favorite short stories. Unfortunately, as a long form novel, I did not enjoy this as much. 

I thought the amount of mystery and sinister secret society stuff was just right. The "boss" with his eye ring, the eye of the creature, the disappearance of the Centre--all of it made my stomach drop when the connections started appearing. I like that we don't get the full picture; what would you want to know? That there's a group sending sacrifices down to an ancient creature that is the ocean itself? I think it works much better unclear and up to your imagination.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Gaslighting, Physical abuse, Animal death, Body horror, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Blood, Death, Death of parent, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

theirgracegrace's review against another edition

emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I read this book in a whirlwind three weeks and I cannot get it out of my head. The pastiche of character moments (especially at the end) can come across as jarring but helps to solidify the main characters Miri and Leah. Their relationship deteriorates when Leah comes back "wrong" after a routine research trip in a submarine leaves her stranded on the ocean floor for six months. The point-of-view bounces between Miri trying to make sense of her wife's strange behaviour and Leah explaining how the trip might have purposefully done for some mysterious ends. A tragic ending puts this book high on my list of recommended books. A fantastic read!

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Body horror, Confinement, Abandonment, Death, Death of parent, Eating disorder, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Vomit, Animal death, Terminal illness, Cursing, Dementia, Mental illness, and Suicide

Moderate: Alcoholism, Addiction, Blood, Violence, Animal cruelty, and Alcohol

Minor: Cancer

One of the main characters is trapped in a submarine with two other people for six months and the three of them go clinically insane.