Julia ArmfieldReseñas

I really appreciate a book where, even weeks after finishing it, I'm still struggling to figure out what it was exactly that I read. Is it a confession? A fairy-tale? An extended metaphor? All or none of the above? Asking around my friends who have read this, and even looking at the reviews on LT, this book seems to produce divided opinions. Some of those are simply downright misguided: a lot of readers seem to expect this to be a naturalistic account of an undersea science trip and a realistic portrayal of two people's relationship. This is despite the fact that the novel features a person literally falling apart and what may or may not be a giant sea monster. But I kind of understand those responses because part of the unsettling aspect of the novel is that it does seem to set up expectations for a realistic treatment of its subject. But this ostensibly naturalistic setting is wrapped in layers of fantasy and myth right from the beginning, not to mention the inclusion of a menacing entity that may be a science startup or may be a government agency or may be something else again. This is definitely not a book for anyone who likes to have everything explained for them; when you finish this you *will* have questions, and you will be left puzzled.

But it seems clear that that is what Armfield is going for here. This is a book about what happens when we lose sight of the profound strangeness of ourselves to one another, and our relationship with the natural world. It looks at what happens when explanations fail to deliver the promised clarity, and to that end the repeated attempts to disrupt our narrative, character, and genre expectations makes a deliberately imperfect sense.

Wow, the writing in this book is beautiful. It’s very heavy with the metaphors, but done in such a perfect way. This horror book (which is what it is although I never really felt that was the focus) is a sapphic romance about connection, loss, and acceptance. With alternating perspectives, I really felt I understood the depth of their relationship from both sides. The story was truly heartbreaking and although I knew it was headed in the direction that it went, I stayed completely engrossed in their narratives.

ALMOST a five star…there is a fine line between leaving some parts up to the imagination and leaving too much unanswered that the reader is left confused and frustrated…I felt this book leaned too much toward the latter. I would have liked just a few more answers, even though I understand their relationship was supposed to be the focus and not as much what happened in the end. Great book, highly recommend!

3.5 stars actually. the ocean is scary! and 'when the grief is inevitable' is also scary!!

this was such a stunning exploration of love and loss and grief and mourning someone who is right in front of you with a bit of (lovecraft, annihilation, the shape of water- i've seen all these associations and agree) horror. julia's writing is gorgeous, she gives you the kind of sentences you just have to sit with, read over and over and appreciate. the story is a slow wade, and once you start receiving answers it's going to be just enough to infer and imagine but that's all you're going to get. AND I LOVE THAT SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is for the ambiguous plot lovers, hill house enjoyers, and horror fans that love to leave feeling completely emotionally wrung out rather than with a racing heart.

Very slow paced and very strange…like I can’t think of a single other book like this one. People keep comparing it to “Annihilation” and while I understand the comparison I disagree; “Our Wives Under the Sea” is much more introspective and tender, and overall I think the characters are much more likable. Those prose here is really lovely and evocative, and it fits the story wonderfully. Although I’m not sure who exactly I’d recommend this to, I’m so glad I read it!! A definite standout, if only for how unique it is.

A strange, unsettling, weird, sad love story about the things we’ll do and the things we’ll sacrifice for the one we love. The fantastical/science fictional elements are surreal, dreamlike. I was reminded of those nightmares where something awful is happening and there’s nothing you can do about it—you can’t find your house, you can’t remember something essential, your teeth are falling out—when in real life you’d just ask for directions or see a dentist. So the actual plot is nightmarishly nonsensical. The real strength of this book is the myriad tiny everyday details that make up a loving relationship, that make up our concept of the one we love: the small gestures cherished, fragments of conversations remembered, even the fights and annoyances. It’s a love story, above all.

I really, truly wanted to like this book, because the premise sounded so unique, but it fell so flat in so many ways that I ended up skimming the last 40%. For all the good things I've heard about this novel so far, I never expected to be so disappointed. (Spoilers to follow, along with 4 exclusive excerpts of stoopid, free of charge!)

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1 - Characterization.

Miri is a whiny, self-pitying imbecile whose tendency toward neglect qualifies as abuse, and Leah is a marine biology Wikipedia page. That's about all there is to them. And they managed to get married?

-- Miri was the first to grate on my nerves because she just would NOT stop having fond flashbacks of their relationship interspersed with pity parties about how difficult it is to carry on a normal life... while her literal WIFE is literally falling apart right in front of her face! And I'm supposed to believe she truly loves Leah? Coming right up, folks: one loved one who can't get her head out of her ass long enough to save yours from becoming sea foam! I can already hear the Centre employees applauding in the background. Wait, they were supposed to be the main antagonists...?

-- Leah had no personality. I really, really wanted to like her to make up for my growing hatred of Miri, but I just couldn't - there was hardly anything of note I could even begin to like. Most of Leah's chapters consist of (1) flashbacks - childhood flashbacks, Miri flashbacks, please stop with the flashbacks, and (2) marine biology and submarine facts. The latter is my only takeaway from this book, and I'm sorry to say that reading Thor Heyerdahl's Wikipedia page (which appeared to be summarized in one of Leah's lectures) held my interest longer than this novel.

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2 - Plotting/Pacing.

-- The entire plot can be summarized as follows: Wife 1 comes home, exhibits signs of no longer being human, disintegrates into water, and Wife 2 allows it to happen. I think we can safely retitle this book as Our Neglected Wives Under the Sea.

-- I know this might not have been the author's intention, but couldn't Miri have tried a little harder to follow up on the Centre in the months since Leah disappeared? I mean, doesn't she love and care about Leah, and if she doesn't (though we're constantly reminded that she does), shouldn't she at least try to find closure? Juna certainly tried for her sister Jelka, who disappeared on the same dive as Leah, and I'd expect at least that much from a relative, let alone a spouse.

-- The Centre was unfortunately such a background detail, and their plot was way too easy to see through. They were set up as a shady mystery facility, which initially contributed to the suspense factor, so why couldn't we get more answers at the end? But no, they just wink out of existence, and partly because Miri does absolutely nothing beyond calling their receptionist, and somehow not even remembering crucial details about where they're located, etc.

-- Leah's chapters lag significantly behind Miri's in terms of timeline, and it's only late in the book where we realize Leah somehow wrote everything down while stranded on the sub, while regularly blacking out and forgetting large chunks of her human existence. As a result, it was a bit hard to believe she could spout facts Wikipedia-style during this time, let alone write down sequential events coherently. And Juna - persistent little Juna who nearly came to blows with Centre employees trying to find her sister - was given Leah's manuscript and couldn't track down Miri to provide it until the very end? Am I supposed to assume foul play? (And Miri needed that manuscript to finally realize that Leah hadn't disappeared for 6 months by choice? Send help.)

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3 - Specially Selected Stupid Moments.

Exhibit A. You Did WHAT?
-- LEAH: (Magically turns up after a 6-month disappearance. Has no trace of her former personality. Behaves like a shell of a human being.)
-- MIRI: (Aside) Why aren't you telling me anything? Where did you disappear to for 6 months? Why did you abandon me? Why can't we have a normal conversation?
-- LEAH: (Slowly turns into a translucent watery creature)
-- MIRI: How could you behave like this? I can't even anymore. (Scrubs scale residue from the bathtub and proceeds with her day)

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Exhibit B. The Mega-Effective Sea-Legs Cure
-- LEAH: (Loses feeling in hands and feet. Struggles to walk and breathe on land. Only feels comfortable when submerged in salt water.)
-- MIRI: Hey honey, let's GO FOR A WALK!! (Grabs LEAH and hauls her outside, where LEAH proceeds to faceplant on a hill. Someone offers to help, and MIRI refuses. Everything seems to be in order.)

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Exhibit C. Nappy Time
-- LEAH: (Struggling to breathe as she sinks into her salt water bath)
-- MIRI: Hey honey, COME TO BED WITH ME!! PLEASE!!! (Grabs LEAH and tries to lift her bodily from the tub)
-- LEAH: (Struggling to breathe, struggling to stand)
-- MIRI: (Lowers LEAH back into the tub) I don't know what's going on anymore. My life sucks.

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Exhibit D. The Bullshit Meter Asks Politely, Am I Chopped Liver?
(Enter three researchers, LEAH, MATTEO, and JELKA. They have been stranded in a submarine in the deep sea.)
-- MATTEO: (Finds the comms dead, but CO2 scrubbers intact.)
-- LEAH: (Finds an almost inexhaustible supply of food.)
-- JELKA: (Finds that the fresh water conversion facilities are still working.)
-- ALL: We're stranded, the power was cut without warning, but all life support systems are intact. Everything seems to be in order.
(The researchers sit down patiently and await rescue. Six months pass, during which JELKA and MATTEO both deteriorate mentally. In his last moments of lucidity, MATTEO makes a startling discovery.)
-- MATTEO: I don't think they were telling us the truth about this mission...
(He shuts down, unable to utter another word.)

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To wrap this up, I don't think I'll be reading another debut "trending" novel for a long while. So far, all the ones I've attempted have closely resembled Swiss cheese in the number of holes that come with. At least classics have stood the test of time, even if they're less popular than they used to be. If you made it this far and happen to agree, thanks for reading and better luck with book hunting!

Beautiful cover, attention-grabbing title, a great hook: months after Miri's wife was scheduled to return from her submarine research trip, she finally returns—but now Miri fears that Leah has come back somehow wrong. But sadly, Our Wives Under the Sea is a slog.

It's the kind of book where no one behaves like a person: they behave like a Literary Character who is aware of their Thematic Resonance. Julia Armfield structures the novel in alternating first-person POV chapters, but there's little by way of difference between Miri and Leah's voices, and no tension gained from that narrative structure. It wasn't surreal enough to ever be startling or leave the reader feeling wrong-footed; it insisted on being realistic enough that I wondered why Miri never just took Leah to A&E or what Leah's academic/scientific career had been like. The prose is laboured, and Armfield has a limited set of rhetorical tics that I was heartily sick of by the end of this book.

It's not the worst book I've ever read but I think the praise for it is, uh... misguided.

The book is well written. The characters are great. The story winds around an accident and the people left to deal with the loss.

I think it's always difficult to tell when you're reading something and struggling if your expectations are wrong, you're too dense, or if it's genuinely an issue with the writing, even if having an issue with the issue is subjective. I'm not sure if maybe I went into it expecting something too different to what I got. I feel like the underwater sections didn't really contribute much - they're a little weird and uncomfortable, but they feel like they're building to something and then in the end they're kind of... Not. And in fact it's emphasised that this isn't the sea, not exactly. It's not behaving like the sea. It's a whole book about the sea, we're treated to delightful sea facts, and then when there's a whole running narrative about being underwater she goes "well there doesn't seem to be anything living here so it's Wrong and Bad Sea". It feels kind of strange.

I guess it reads as a novel about grief and letting go which has a story about being stuck in a submarine interleaved. But even the grief felt strange because so little is dedicated to what happened before. There's a whole life they shared before the emotional devastation of the story and yet you barely get glimpses. And it's strange to have 2 first person perspectives when they come across as near identical people, even though they shouldn't.

I'm not sure how I feel about it overall, I guess. I feel like I was missing something all the way through. There were some emotional moments but the whole thing never really felt like it cohered. Maybe I'm just dumb idk

I read this in a pretty fragmented way, and I think it would really have benefited from being read in a couple of settings.

The biggest question is what happens to a marriage when the person you married is no longer the person you married? Leah and Miri find themselves having to come to terms with that question. The two women had always had a conventional marriage of mostly comfortable routine. They shared a love of movies, and genuine happiness at having actually found each other. Then Leah, who is a marine scientist, goes on a three-week submarine expedition on which things go disastrously wrong. She and her shipmates disappear for six months to the bottom of the ocean. Most of the story from here is in Miri’s narrative which is composed mostly from excerpts from Leah’s diary of the mission. We learn of their growing awareness and grudging management of the changes and relationship losses they both endured as a result of their prolonged separation. Although Leah returns home, things do not go as Miri had envisioned. From the time of her return there has been an unanticipated transformation, a terrifying dissolution of her human form into something unfamiliar and strange which heavily challenges Miri’s assumptions about the course of what their life was to be for them together. Life for them grows deeper and darker as the novel slowly reveals that the horrific situation Leah tolerated may not have been as accidental as it first was revealed to be. The unearthly circumstances of Leah’s underwater captivity and mutation are horrible enough, but take on new meaning in relation to other, more understandable situations Miri has faced in her life...the metamorphosis her mother underwent during a fatal illness and the sometimes-irritating voices she hears constantly emanating from an unseen neighbor’s television. Is Leah's current circumstance just further along the lines associated with human understanding of loss and endurance...or is it something much less understood or expected? The author does a great job of guiding the reader through the unsure and unexpected parts of the couple’s lives and even sometimes approaching them with ironic humor. We see that the bleakest horror story can often also be a love story.½

I struggled with the idea that they seemed to put very little effort into fixing the submarine despite having the training for it.

4.75 stars. the writing in this book is absolutely stunning. i really loved this, right from the start, and it only continued to awe me as it went.

i think a lot of people will read this as a book of horror or science fiction and maybe that's what it is. but to me it's one giant metaphor for how we live when someone we love changes. whether that's just people who change separately so the relationship doesn't fit anymore, or something happens to change someone like a trauma or accident, or if someone transitions maybe. there are so many ways this can be true, and that's why i love reading it this way. we change in all sorts of ways, so many of which could be antithetical to the relationship that worked so well before. maybe it can still work, but maybe it can't. and what does it look like as you figure that out? i think it looks kind of like this. for most of the book i thought that miri was unrealistically passive. i wanted to yell at her to just do something, anything, but really, i don't know what's more realistic than being frozen with uncertainty, want, and sadness, as you see the world you had made crumbling. as someone who freezes under pressure myself, i should have given her more leeway throughout the book. i can see just moving forward while trying to hold on to whatever you can of the past and the person you love, not knowing what to do, until you do.

"I see my mother in myself, though less in the sense of inherited features and more in the sense of an intruder poor hidden behind a curtain."

"My heart is a thing thing, these days -- shred of paper blown between the spaces in my ribs."

the only line i didn't like and that really rubbed me the wrong way: "The problem with relationships between women is that neither one of you is automatically the wronged party, which frankly takes a lot of the fun out of an argument." this felt way too pat and frankly not worthy of the rest of the book this is in.½

4 stars
not really what I expected, more about love and grief than anything but beautiful writing! would have loved more horror and a better ending though.

characters: 4
plot: 3
writing: 5

I loved this book, and it was interesting to read it not very long after having read Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation. Though comparisons are inevitable, these are very different works, and while I enjoyed VanderMeer's novel, Armfield's strikes at the heart in a very different way. Whereas Annihilation undoubtedly leans into gothic horror, marketing Armfield's book as a horror novel is a mistake, though certainly what happens in it is nothing short of horrific. On the surface Annihilation is about what makes us human and about human tendencies. It's more nuanced than that, but I'm talking about at the most superficial level. Our Wives Under the Sea is about grief. Again, that's superficial but also potent, real, and personal.

When in the throes of grief, people often do things that seem strange or "wrong" to those who aren't living under the same influence of shock, dismay, and denial. Miri makes many choices that come off as illogical because they are, but she's as deeply under the ocean of grief and confusion as Leah is deep down in the unknown sea. We will learn that Leah goes through her own process of grieving and missing Miri, both while she is trapped in the submersible and when she is trapped in whatever metamorphosis is overtaking and erasing her.

We don't get any real answers. Who is behind the Centre, what was the real nature of their mission, what is really down there? These things don't matter. What happened and what's happening is what matters. Who or what Miri becomes is as mysterious to Leah as it is to the reader, but the fact of the matter is the whole of this metamorphosis also changes the couple's relationship, and it changes Leah. These things are inevitable; when the onslaught of grief comes there's no stopping it, and it is a solitary, re-defining experience that cuts the griever off from the rest of the world. Whether you lose someone to an accident, an illness, age, or unforgivable behavior, the effect is the same. You can lose someone all at once or over long periods of time. Either way, the very moment in which that loss is finalized always comes a surprise. You find you have lost but also that you have become lost. Left behind isn't a place that feels orienting. You get taken under, left with selected memories of what was and what will no longer ever be.

Armfield's writing is elegant, lyrical, and to me, deeply satisfying even if I keep asking myself why 4 stars and not 5. I don't know, and that is likely appropriate since that's also an element of this work: accepting the not knowing.

More grief and loss, not sure what I was thinking when I picked these two back to back. This was a bit too confusing and poetic for me, but it is very well written. Mira's wife Leah has returned from a deep see research trip, but she is not the same as when she left. Told in alternating voices, between Miri and Lean, seems to be about letting go.½

This wasn't quite for me. The premise is great, the few things that happen are fascinating, but there just isn't quite enough here for me to grasp on to. The main characters are so similar in voice that I can't pull them apart aside from their settings. Beautifully written but I need a smidge more substance.

Some very nice passages and often beautiful sentences, but it felt hazy when I wanted clarity, and I can't decide what it's trying to do. Ultimately the science fictional elements don't feel like they're adding much or pointing to anything or standing in for anything, and absent that I would either want them to work more like SF (rather than lit fic) OR for the book to be a more straight forward exploration of grief and loss and a relationship's end. I wish I'd loved it, but it's a shrug from me, I guess. A quite nicely written shrug, but.½

“Ghosts don't speak,' she said to me. 'People misunderstand this. They think that when you're haunted you hear someone speaking but you don't. Or not usually. Most of the time, if you hear something speaking, it's not a ghost - it's something worse.”

Miri thinks she has got her wife back when Leah finally returns after a three-week deep-sea mission that extends to months and ends in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah is not the same. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has brought part of it back with her, onto dry land and into their home.

This book might split people. It is slow moving and alternates chapters between Miri - the wife on land - and Leah - the wife under the sea, although I will say that Leah's chapters caught my attention more. It is literary fiction that dips its toe into horror, thriller and mystery and there are haunting undertones to the story that move under the surface adding a tense sense of anticipation.

I really liked the story. It was something different but also left a lot of questions unanswered. There would be some great meat in this for a deep literary analysis of the themes and imagery. It is an allegory of grief and loss and what we are willing to do for love.

A great read for me and I'd definitely recommend it to others.

Halfway through reading this book, I joked that it felt like romance readers were being lured into a horror novel. Now that I've read it, I rather feel the opposite--as if SFF/Horror readers were lured into a tragic romance. And I wish I'd been right the first time.

The truth is, there's a lot to this book that's gorgeous--images, concept, writing, and even the subtlety to the characters' relationship. But the choices made in style and structure lead to a fair amount of repetition and what feels like 'filler' while also tamping down tension and suspense over and over again, to the extent that it feels like a literary drama with just a touch of SFF. Maybe the book just wasn't for me, but personally, I can't help feeling like the whole concept was just wasted on a book that I enjoyed moments of, but was largely glad to be done with, especially as the inevitable end became clearer and clearer, and I became less and less engaged in what the author had clearly bent herself to exploring.

Some readers will love this book. Personally, I didn't, and I don't see myself exploring more work from the author.

Great collection. I've read a number of short stories lately with the weird twist, sometimes intriguing or fun or goofy, but often standing out as weird for weird's sake. Armfield writes the weird in a way that makes it inevitable and necessary.

Thank you to my local bookstore for this recommendation during quarantine based just on the out of print book I was looking for. You are so much better than an algorithm.

I already can’t stop thinking about this book

I absolutely loved this weird little story, despite the writing being very dark and meandering! The author's turn of phrase is both amusing - 'Carmen typically speaks about him the way one might refer to a degree: a three-year period one has to endure in order to talk with overbearing authority on exactly one subject' - and thought provoking - 'To drop below the surface is still to sink, however intentionally – a simple matter of taking on water, just as drowning only requires you to open your mouth.' And of course, reading this in June 2023, with the loss of the 'Titanic' submersible now confirmed, there is an unintentionally poignant aspect to the text:

“What are they going to do,” she said, her impulse to pray apparently cut short by irritation, “send a search party ten thousand feet then throw a rope ladder the rest of the way?”

Told in alternating chapters of first person narration, marine biologist Leah recounts her descent to the depths of the ocean on a research expedition to study life in the 'Hadal Zone', while her wife Miri realises that the woman who returned to her after six months below the sea is no longer the same person, and that she might not be human at all. I loved the sci-fi element, very reminiscent of the excellent Blackwater books by Michael McDowell, but also couldn't stop thinking about the metaphysical subtext of love and loss. Miri has to face being married to a stranger, but also starts to grieve for Leah before she has to let her go. I prefer character-driven narratives, and loved learning about Miri's fractious history with her late mother and Leah's love of the sea, complete with 'did you know?' trivia. Their relationship did seem a little cutesy, full of details about favourite films and personal observations, but the rose-tinted past is balanced by the horror of the present and the pain of the future. And as Miri observes:

I want to explain her in a way that would make you love her, but the problem with this is that loving is something we all do alone and through different sets of eyes.

To paraphrase Johnny Nash, I was left with more questions than answers, but was completely captivated by the story and the characters - I nearly missed my stop while reading on the way to work, and I was only a couple of chapters in!