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A review by versmonesprit
Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
0.25
I listened to the audiobook, and I’m still not sure if it enhanced my experience with the book, or if I’d have enjoyed it far more had I read it for myself. Though I can say two things for sure: the book was a disappointment, but the narrators were great. My biggest issue with audiobooks is narrators who try to live out their theatre kid fantasies by performing full on drama, yelling in people’s ears. Thankfully, the narrators here knew how to read calmly.
I expected so much from this book, and regretted it so much when I missed out on the opportunity to purchase the hardcover. Now I’m thankful to whomever snatched the only copy, I would’ve cried had I spent money on this.
Unfortunately with contemporary books that are not within the scope of literature, the mass market hype is going to be there. Some of that hype is so misdirected, so cut off from the reality of the book that it only sets the book up for failure. This book has been called weird and gothic, and it’s really anything but for the most part. Armfield has missed a BIG opportunity here to make actual art, but I guess the mass market success is more desirable, which I perfectly understand, but don’t give much value to.
The book alternates between Miri’s PoV set in the now of the book, and Leah’s set in the past of the book, though most of Miri’s chapters are also flashbacks. Both of these narrations are too sober to suit the premise of the book, when it merited a truly surreal tone. I can’t say for sure if the two narrators had their distinct voices, but it didn’t necessarily felt so.
Our Wives Under the Sea is a book that suffers from an identity crisis: it doesn’t know what it wants to be. SciFi thriller with the sinisterly mysterious Centre that disappears? Weird fiction with cosmic horror undertones? Contemporary romance with silly li’l convos? The only thing worse than the constant mentions of movies and whatnot was the literal info dump: Armfield seems to have googled biology facts to then copy-paste them. Why?? You do a clever little thing by naming your book’s parts after the levels of the ocean, and then ruin the effect by explaining them within the narration?? Then we have biologists telling each other that jellyfish are mostly water?? It’s all over the place.
The lack of editing down also ruins the final eeriness/creepiness the climax of the book builds, when the crescendo is interrupted by more meandering thoughts and narrations by Leah and Miri. Why would someone ruin their own book’s height??
When people say nothing really happens throughout the book, it’s because nothing really happens throughout the book. It’s pretty much the blurb: Leah is gone on a deep sea mission for 3 weeks, but returns 6 months later. Miri finds her changed. We don’t get more than that, and even Leah’s end is the most anticlimactic option possible. We never really get the horror and heartbreak of Leah changing into something that’s not human — not from Leah herself, not from Miri. Her condition is approached clinically, and with utter disinterest when you come to think of it. Characters do the absolute bare minimum for some reason.
The cherry on top is that we never even get any real deep sea horror either. You read and you read and you read, and at the end the most that is revealed from Leah is that she saw a giant eye. Deep in the ocean. A creature’s eye. Shocking! What revelation! There has never been a huge sea animal with an eye before, not in reality, not in fiction! What an original masterpiece! How scary! A sea animal that has an eye! That’s literally it, that’s the most we get.
If you think the book hints at anything… no it doesn’t. It gives absolutely nothing, no foundation, no hint, no clue, not a single breadcrumb for the reader to fill the blanks in. No, it gives absolutely nothing, and because you want to believe you didn’t waste your time reading this book only for the writer to have been too lazy to write anything, you gaslight yourself into believing there’s something between the lines, the book’s lack of content is actually eerie and hides something sinister. It doesn’t.
And to be clear — I don’t like plot-heavy books. I don’t care if nothing happens, I don’t need anything to happen. I read for the art of it. I read for the expression. But there is none of that here! This is a plot-based mass market book that doesn’t even have a style to make up for its lack of substance.
If you want to see what can be done with a similar premise (the effects of death at sea) pick up Vi Khi Nao’s Fish in Exile. It’s surreal and emotional and poetic and everything Our Wives Under the Sea would have benefitted insanely from having.
I expected so much from this book, and regretted it so much when I missed out on the opportunity to purchase the hardcover. Now I’m thankful to whomever snatched the only copy, I would’ve cried had I spent money on this.
Unfortunately with contemporary books that are not within the scope of literature, the mass market hype is going to be there. Some of that hype is so misdirected, so cut off from the reality of the book that it only sets the book up for failure. This book has been called weird and gothic, and it’s really anything but for the most part. Armfield has missed a BIG opportunity here to make actual art, but I guess the mass market success is more desirable, which I perfectly understand, but don’t give much value to.
The book alternates between Miri’s PoV set in the now of the book, and Leah’s set in the past of the book, though most of Miri’s chapters are also flashbacks. Both of these narrations are too sober to suit the premise of the book, when it merited a truly surreal tone. I can’t say for sure if the two narrators had their distinct voices, but it didn’t necessarily felt so.
Our Wives Under the Sea is a book that suffers from an identity crisis: it doesn’t know what it wants to be. SciFi thriller with the sinisterly mysterious Centre that disappears? Weird fiction with cosmic horror undertones? Contemporary romance with silly li’l convos? The only thing worse than the constant mentions of movies and whatnot was the literal info dump: Armfield seems to have googled biology facts to then copy-paste them. Why?? You do a clever little thing by naming your book’s parts after the levels of the ocean, and then ruin the effect by explaining them within the narration?? Then we have biologists telling each other that jellyfish are mostly water?? It’s all over the place.
The lack of editing down also ruins the final eeriness/creepiness the climax of the book builds, when the crescendo is interrupted by more meandering thoughts and narrations by Leah and Miri. Why would someone ruin their own book’s height??
When people say nothing really happens throughout the book, it’s because nothing really happens throughout the book. It’s pretty much the blurb: Leah is gone on a deep sea mission for 3 weeks, but returns 6 months later. Miri finds her changed. We don’t get more than that, and even Leah’s end is the most anticlimactic option possible. We never really get the horror and heartbreak of Leah changing into something that’s not human — not from Leah herself, not from Miri. Her condition is approached clinically, and with utter disinterest when you come to think of it. Characters do the absolute bare minimum for some reason.
The cherry on top is that we never even get any real deep sea horror either. You read and you read and you read, and at the end the most that is revealed from Leah is that she saw a giant eye. Deep in the ocean. A creature’s eye. Shocking! What revelation! There has never been a huge sea animal with an eye before, not in reality, not in fiction! What an original masterpiece! How scary! A sea animal that has an eye! That’s literally it, that’s the most we get.
If you think the book hints at anything… no it doesn’t. It gives absolutely nothing, no foundation, no hint, no clue, not a single breadcrumb for the reader to fill the blanks in. No, it gives absolutely nothing, and because you want to believe you didn’t waste your time reading this book only for the writer to have been too lazy to write anything, you gaslight yourself into believing there’s something between the lines, the book’s lack of content is actually eerie and hides something sinister. It doesn’t.
And to be clear — I don’t like plot-heavy books. I don’t care if nothing happens, I don’t need anything to happen. I read for the art of it. I read for the expression. But there is none of that here! This is a plot-based mass market book that doesn’t even have a style to make up for its lack of substance.
If you want to see what can be done with a similar premise (the effects of death at sea) pick up Vi Khi Nao’s Fish in Exile. It’s surreal and emotional and poetic and everything Our Wives Under the Sea would have benefitted insanely from having.