Our Wives Under The Sea

Honestly, best book I read last year.

This is a difficult book to rate… It’s hard for me to reconcile the vivid poetic prose throughout the book with the dry exposition and summarization of events ALSO throughout the book. But it is a unique and intriguing story. I can’t think of any other book quite like it, and I mean that as a compliment. The story is told in a very non-linear fashion and I’m not sure if the plot even has structure in any traditional sense. If that’s not your cup of tea, then look elsewhere. But if you don’t mind that, then dive in and briefly drown yourself in this haunting love story. It’s ultimately about grief. One minor character sums it up quite nicely toward the end: “the thing about losing someone isn’t the loss but the absence afterward” That haunting absence that fills empty spaces it feels your loved ones should still occupy.

I'm really struggling with how I feel about this book a week after finishing it, but I think my overall emotion would be disappointment. There are elements I really enjoyed, such as some of the intentional absurdity (the therapist who doesn't seem to react to what the protagonist ever says, the blood dripping from a character's face being called normal, phone calls that never get resolved). I think it also does a really good job exploring grief over your loved ones "haunting" your life while still alive. But other elements really don't work for me. There is no resolution of the various mysteries brought up. I suppose they're not meant to matter, just the exploration of Mira's emotions, but if that were the case then I wish tantalizing plot elements weren't included that made me think the book was going to accomplish more. The horror (and body horror) does not work for me. The aforementioned absurdity I praised starts to lose its impact and the newer horror elements added throughout feel too vague or uninteresting to really grab my attention. There was one reveal in particular that made me feel like it was supposed to be very shocking, but just had me thinking, "so what?" At a certain point while reading, maybe half-way through, I realized that the book does not escalate (or devolve?) despite the chapter titles suggesting you are descending into a horrifying pitch-black depth akin to the ocean. A passage from the start and a passage from the end would feel the same. It started to feel like I was reading the same thing over and over and I began to resent how long the book felt. I really, really wanted to like this book. I even really like elements of the ending. But I didn't feel haunted by it, or scared, or thoughtful. Just disappointed because I felt like it could have been a lot more than what it was.

This is so beautifully written. It's extremely poetic and haunting. There's a level of detail and commitment to the language choices that I find really satisfying. It also scared the life out of me. It's not a particularly long book, and I was expecting to read it rather quickly. But there was too much going on that mirrored real life and so I had to put it down and take more breaks than I anticipated. I've never been a huge fan of the deep-sea exploration trope. Part of me finds it baffling that we know more about space than we do about the depths of our own planet. And yet, there's another part of me that feels it would be better if it stayed that way. If we disturb things in our ocean depths...they're a lot closer to home than light years away. So was this a book about exploring the depths of the seas or the depths of human relationships? Yes. It was that. Both of them simultaneously. Maybe to mirror just how little we understand about human connection? I don't know, but I think it did it well. How far will you go to get back to the people you loved and the life you knew? How hard do you work to honor connections and love that are changed and twisted into new shapes that you may not recognize?

This book was good, though it doesn't top a favorites list by any means. The pacing was slow, but inevitable, both creeping toward the end and keeping me turning pages. The haunting of someone still with us but only barely was especially poignant. Not a book I would have picked for myself without a challenge or book club behind it. If you are into dark academia or the undertow of horror... This one is for you.

Truly a niche read. It’s slow and wandering between two POVs of a married couple, slithering between timelines. It’s visceral and existential with just enough to hold you into the here and now. The ocean in of itself is terrifying to me, so the one woman’s love and connection to it was uncomfortable to me which was exciting. Her wife is barely hanging on, trying to hold onto who her wife was before she was lost under sea. It poses a lot of interesting theories, bodily transformations and trying to remember the person you love through memories of who they once were. Not what I was searching for at the time or the type of genre I specifically seek out but was still very well written.

This was voted as a book read for August so I took the plunge and said why not! Water, creatures and the unknown what could possibly go wrong a great recipe for a great book. The book is about a woman whose wife studies the sea (marine biologist) and goes on this stretches of exploring the sea. Which I thought okay this was interesting. I am not sure what happened (or didn’t happen in my case) I was struggling to finish this book. I am not sure if it was how the author wrote the book eluding to what happened but not really saying. Many times I wanted to throw my kindle against the wall because this book was just awful. This isn’t the book for me, I will not discourage anyone from reading this book. I did like the writing style between the two main characters which was good but that’s about all the praise I’ll give this book. I have never read a book so much that I disliked. For anyone else who is brave to read the book please go for it. My only regret is I read this book.

My favorite book in the world.

This is honestly, one of the most amazing books I have had the pleasure of reading. Even when I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it. The novel is written so delicately, moving fluidly between perspectives which lyricaly complement eachother. It is romantic with unavoidable pain and horror that comes forward when you don't expect it.

Livré en bon état, hate de le lire

Lo compré especialmente para leerlo durante un viaje, tras meses de ser incapaz de concentrarme en leer. Los primeros capítulos me costaron un poco, pero luego fui incapaz de parar de leer hasta llegar al final, y sigo pensando en el libro semanas después. No creo que guste a todos los públicos pero para mí, un imprescindible de la literatura lésbica.

MIRI and LEAH are a married couple. They live in an apartment which has neighbours who listen to loud television ‘soaps’. They have friends called Sam and Carmen, drink cherry Coke, eat pizza – it’s very studenty. Both of them frequently examine their tongues, their teeth, and their skins. They spend a lot of time in the bath, particularly Leah, and as the reader reads this novel OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA by Julia Armfield, they become aware that Leah has taken part in a deep-sea diving research mission. Miri – though she says she did work in the past – it seems is a ‘stay home’ partner whilst Leah is the wife under the sea and is employed by THE CENTRE, a mysterious faceless organization who seem to be only contactable by telephone. The entire 230pp novel is in the form of two alternating accounts, Miri’s monologue – though there is dialogue in both - written in the present tense, and Leah’s point of view delivered in the past tense. On p10 we gather that something is wrong, Leah’s submarine which she shares with two other crew, MATTEO and JELKA has ‘lost contact’ and we gradually realize what ‘deep sea’ means, its seven and a half miles deep – and probably somewhere at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, the mission takes months. Miri has to start coming to terms with the possibility that Leah may not return. The Centre gives her no information so she seeks solace with on-line blogs, one for missing persons, another for the ‘wives of imaginary spacemen.’ Meanwhile, Leah describes conditions on the submarine in torchlight only, strange noises, smells and increasing hints of a life presence of mythological proportions. I say ‘meanwhile’ but part of the deftness of this novel is the structuring of past tense and present - the compartmenting as it were. The two points of view are not simultaneous, so the reader has no idea whether or not Leah gets back or survives until the later stages of the narrative. About three quarters of the way through, Jelka’s sister Juna contacts Miri with ‘something to tell’. This throws the whole novel into a different gear and the pace accelerates toward a conclusion which explores the origins of all life itself.

Product arrived quickly and undamaged.