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A review by cocoanatomical
Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.5
An absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking exploration of queer love, the uncanny, loss and grief.
Our Wives Under the See uses motifs and elements that can be associated with Lovecraft’s work (Cthulhu, is that you?) and Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy but this novel is so unique in its own way and the prose is *chefs kiss* incredibly captivating.
I especially love the use of spatiality and temporality and thought the structure of the chapters added so much to the story - the changing POV of each chapter essentially allowing us to see 2 different timelines.
Miri, for the most part, exists within the present. She’s very much trying as best she can to cope with the consequences of what has happened to her wife, while Leah is continuously slipping away.
Leah on the other hand seems to still be very much stuck in the past, re-experiencing the incident as we readers learn about it for the first time.
This structure immediately reminded me of something we see in people struggling with PTSD.
When triggered, patients suffering from this mental condition often experience what had happened to them again and again. Their body and brain reacting as if it would happened in the present.
This sort of temporal discontinuity is a very effective way to structure this story and highlights what these characters (very much isolated from each other) are going through.
Our Wives Under the See uses motifs and elements that can be associated with Lovecraft’s work (Cthulhu, is that you?) and Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy but this novel is so unique in its own way and the prose is *chefs kiss* incredibly captivating.
I especially love the use of spatiality and temporality and thought the structure of the chapters added so much to the story - the changing POV of each chapter essentially allowing us to see 2 different timelines.
Leah on the other hand seems to still be very much stuck in the past, re-experiencing the incident as we readers learn about it for the first time.
This structure immediately reminded me of something we see in people struggling with PTSD.
When triggered, patients suffering from this mental condition often experience what had happened to them again and again. Their body and brain reacting as if it would happened in the present.
This sort of temporal discontinuity is a very effective way to structure this story and highlights what these characters (very much isolated from each other) are going through.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood and Body horror