Recent Reading: Our Wives Under the Sea
Apr. 25th, 2025 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rocky41_7 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fffridayLatest commute audiobook: Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. This novel is about a woman, Miri, whose wife is a marine biologist, and goes on a submarine expedition for work meant to last three weeks. Six months later, Leah's sub finally resurfaces, but she isn't the same person Miri remembers.
This is another WIN for online queer recs - I thoroughly enjoyed it. I may even buy a copy for myself. There is a horror element to this story—for Miri, our primary narrator, the horror of watching someone you love become something you don't recognize or understand—but mostly Our Wives Under the Sea is a meditation on grief and loss. It is so easy to transform this story into a metaphor for anyone with a loved one who is terminally ill, or missing, or otherwise there, but not there.
Armfield's writing beautifully illustrates this journey, and she does a particularly good job of doling out information a little at a time, so that the reader often share's in Miri's confusion and muddled state of mind. The audiobook is only six hours, but the story moves along at a leisurely pace, the horror of it unfurling slowly in small, initially mundane things, like Leah's new obsession with running the faucets, or her strange eating habits (which Miri has been with her long enough to recognize as out of character). We spend long moments with Miri on the phone, trying to get ahold of Leah's private employer to get some answers, only to see her once again rerouted through an obtuse bureaucracy, and this wonderfully crescendos the growing fear of wondering if anyone has answers or will take responsibility for what's happened to Leah.
While most of the book is from Miri's perspective, Leah does break in with excerpts from her recollection of that last submarine dive. Most of her chapters are as unsettling as you would expect, but readers looking for all-out horror are likely to be disappointed. The focus of this book isn't on what happened, exactly, to Leah and her team, but what happens when they get back, and on Leah's relationship with Miri. And in this sense, I think Armfield maintains the sheen of horror over the whole story, which is in large part, the fear of the unknown. What is more frightening for Miri and Leah than to not understand? I think it may also support the idea that even Leah who experienced the thing can't put it into words or understand what exactly happened to her; it is simply too alien.
Armfield also excels at capturing Miri's emotional struggle and the way her moods swing from frequent emotional catatonia to sudden flashes of anger or open grief or nostalgia as she struggles to understand this person in her home wearing her wife's face. This is a messy situation all around, and it shows so believably here, in how Miri distances herself from their friends as she can't think of how to explain to them exactly what's wrong with Leah; in how after months with no improvement of Leah's often bizarre and troubling behaviors, Miri begins to resent her wife; in how she continues to put herself through the motions of the every day while trying to manage this utterly baffling home situation.
Mixed in with Miri's struggle to adapt to Leah's new behavior are her recollections of their relationship prior to Leah's most recent dive, which paint a sweet and achingly realistic portrait of a couple. No spoilers, but I was definitely starting to get choked up at the end!
The book builds towards a predictable end, but I didn't find this took away from the story at all. At some point, you're aware that there's only really one way for this to go, but Armfield manages to keep the story engaging through that endpoint even as you saw it coming. It comes so naturally as the climax and denouement of the journey we've been on with Miri. As noted, it's easy to couch this book as a metaphor. Leah is home, but not really. Leah is alive, but not really. Leah is there, but she's not Leah anymore. There are certainly parallels with Miri's past experience with her mother, who passed away after a battle with dementia several years earlier. She was there, but not there. Alive, but not herself. Miri is trapped in emotional purgatory, neither able to have her beloved wife, nor able to let her go, and it's both gut-wrenching and deeply touching to see. Leah, even as she is now, is so loved. And there is where the more mundane horror comes in: the horror of feeling that you're watching someone you love slowly slip away from you and you cannot close your fingers around their essence to keep them here, with you.
This was a fantastic read, highly recommend if you're a reader with patience for a slow, very introspective story. I will definitely be looking into more of Armfield's work in the future.
Crossposted from my main andbooks
While most of the book is from Miri's perspective, Leah does break in with excerpts from her recollection of that last submarine dive. Most of her chapters are as unsettling as you would expect, but readers looking for all-out horror are likely to be disappointed. The focus of this book isn't on what happened, exactly, to Leah and her team, but what happens when they get back, and on Leah's relationship with Miri. And in this sense, I think Armfield maintains the sheen of horror over the whole story, which is in large part, the fear of the unknown. What is more frightening for Miri and Leah than to not understand? I think it may also support the idea that even Leah who experienced the thing can't put it into words or understand what exactly happened to her; it is simply too alien.
Armfield also excels at capturing Miri's emotional struggle and the way her moods swing from frequent emotional catatonia to sudden flashes of anger or open grief or nostalgia as she struggles to understand this person in her home wearing her wife's face. This is a messy situation all around, and it shows so believably here, in how Miri distances herself from their friends as she can't think of how to explain to them exactly what's wrong with Leah; in how after months with no improvement of Leah's often bizarre and troubling behaviors, Miri begins to resent her wife; in how she continues to put herself through the motions of the every day while trying to manage this utterly baffling home situation.
Mixed in with Miri's struggle to adapt to Leah's new behavior are her recollections of their relationship prior to Leah's most recent dive, which paint a sweet and achingly realistic portrait of a couple. No spoilers, but I was definitely starting to get choked up at the end!
The book builds towards a predictable end, but I didn't find this took away from the story at all. At some point, you're aware that there's only really one way for this to go, but Armfield manages to keep the story engaging through that endpoint even as you saw it coming. It comes so naturally as the climax and denouement of the journey we've been on with Miri. As noted, it's easy to couch this book as a metaphor. Leah is home, but not really. Leah is alive, but not really. Leah is there, but she's not Leah anymore. There are certainly parallels with Miri's past experience with her mother, who passed away after a battle with dementia several years earlier. She was there, but not there. Alive, but not herself. Miri is trapped in emotional purgatory, neither able to have her beloved wife, nor able to let her go, and it's both gut-wrenching and deeply touching to see. Leah, even as she is now, is so loved. And there is where the more mundane horror comes in: the horror of feeling that you're watching someone you love slowly slip away from you and you cannot close your fingers around their essence to keep them here, with you.
This was a fantastic read, highly recommend if you're a reader with patience for a slow, very introspective story. I will definitely be looking into more of Armfield's work in the future.
Crossposted from my main and
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