Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by angethology
Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield
5.0
"It is easier, I think, to consider the fact of us in its many disparate pieces, as opposed to one vast and intractable thing. Easier, I think, to claw through the scatter of us in the hopes of retrieving something, or pulling some singular thing from the debris and holding it up to the light."
This is a haunting and slow-paced gothic novel that follows a journey throughout and about the ocean, and how it's the catalyst, but also the reflection of Leah and Miri's relationship.
Alternating between their points of view and different timelines, Miri ruminates about what it's like when she finds herself waiting for her wife from a deep sea mission, a simple research trip that keeps getting extended. Happy to see her wife finally returning, she realizes that Leah left a part of herself on the ocean. A biologist, Leah elucidates her perspective in the novel by talking about her time in the submersible, and the eerie experiences she encounters.
The narrative mainly relies on their memories of "before" and "after," highlighting the contrast of what Leah was like before the mission, and the changes that transpired after. As the story progresses, Leah's matter-of-fact tone slowly descends into uncertainty: from focusing to the alluring and fascinating depths of the abyss spouting all kinds of trivia, to losing that logical and reverential attitude toward the very thing that made her feel safe. Being in a tincan, the claustrophobia and sense of helplessness are almost tangible.
Likewise, Miri is having a hard time grasping that there's something not quite right with the love of her life since her return. Miri goes through different stages of grief in a nonlinear way, the first one when she isn't certain of the return of her wife:
"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."
Upon the return of her wife, Miri grapples with a new sense of loss as Leah doesn't seem like herself, and goes through stages of denial, anger, acceptance of simply indifference. Miri takes fragments of memories of the "before" and hangs onto them as arbitrary as they may be, which reflects the disorienting and disconcerting nature of the total darkness that enveloped the tin can Leah was stuck in, for months.
I adore Julia Armfield's writing; she has a very poetic and gentle way of moving the narrative forward, tethering the intensity of the ocean with the characters' emotions. She wants the readers to feel submersed the same way Leah is in the submersible, and the same way Miri is in her head. Yet, we don't fully understand the gravity of what they're dealing with. There's this constant familiar nag and pull of what the characters are feeling — loss, grief, trauma are things that many have come across.
However with the subliminal and sublime aspect of the ocean, we're confronted with fears with don't even know, which is where the author really excels at. And that's the scary part, that limbo between what's real and what isn't it, what's logical and what's supernatural or psychological, and when it begins and ends.
"To know the ocean, I have always felt, is to recognise the teeth it keeps half hidden."
This is a haunting and slow-paced gothic novel that follows a journey throughout and about the ocean, and how it's the catalyst, but also the reflection of Leah and Miri's relationship.
Alternating between their points of view and different timelines, Miri ruminates about what it's like when she finds herself waiting for her wife from a deep sea mission, a simple research trip that keeps getting extended. Happy to see her wife finally returning, she realizes that Leah left a part of herself on the ocean. A biologist, Leah elucidates her perspective in the novel by talking about her time in the submersible, and the eerie experiences she encounters.
The narrative mainly relies on their memories of "before" and "after," highlighting the contrast of what Leah was like before the mission, and the changes that transpired after. As the story progresses, Leah's matter-of-fact tone slowly descends into uncertainty: from focusing to the alluring and fascinating depths of the abyss spouting all kinds of trivia, to losing that logical and reverential attitude toward the very thing that made her feel safe. Being in a tincan, the claustrophobia and sense of helplessness are almost tangible.
Likewise, Miri is having a hard time grasping that there's something not quite right with the love of her life since her return. Miri goes through different stages of grief in a nonlinear way, the first one when she isn't certain of the return of her wife:
"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."
Upon the return of her wife, Miri grapples with a new sense of loss as Leah doesn't seem like herself, and goes through stages of denial, anger, acceptance of simply indifference. Miri takes fragments of memories of the "before" and hangs onto them as arbitrary as they may be, which reflects the disorienting and disconcerting nature of the total darkness that enveloped the tin can Leah was stuck in, for months.
I adore Julia Armfield's writing; she has a very poetic and gentle way of moving the narrative forward, tethering the intensity of the ocean with the characters' emotions. She wants the readers to feel submersed the same way Leah is in the submersible, and the same way Miri is in her head. Yet, we don't fully understand the gravity of what they're dealing with. There's this constant familiar nag and pull of what the characters are feeling — loss, grief, trauma are things that many have come across.
However with the subliminal and sublime aspect of the ocean, we're confronted with fears with don't even know, which is where the author really excels at. And that's the scary part, that limbo between what's real and what isn't it, what's logical and what's supernatural or psychological, and when it begins and ends.
"To know the ocean, I have always felt, is to recognise the teeth it keeps half hidden."