מאת Julia Armfield
Named as a book to look out for by Guardian, i-D, Autostraddle, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, Stylist and DAZED.
Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It's a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep, deep sea.
Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home.
To have the woman she loves back should mean a return to normal life, but Miri can feel Leah slipping from her grasp. Memories of what they had before – the jokes they shared, the films they watched, all the small things that made Leah hers – only remind Miri of what she stands to lose. Living in the same space but suddenly separate, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had might be gone.
'Part bruisingly tender love story, part nerve-clanging submarine thriller . . . heart-slicing, cinematic.' - The Times
Named as a book to look out for by Guardian, i-D, Autostraddle, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, Stylist and DAZED.
Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It's a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep, deep sea.
Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home.
To have the woman she loves back should mean a return to normal life, but Miri can feel Leah slipping from her grasp. Memories of what they had before – the jokes they shared, the films they watched, all the small things that made Leah hers – only remind Miri of what she stands to lose. Living in the same space but suddenly separate, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had might be gone.
'Part bruisingly tender love story, part nerve-clanging submarine thriller . . . heart-slicing, cinematic.' - The Times
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Starred review from May 9, 2022
Armfield follows her collection, Salt Slow, with a moody and intimate debut novel, both a portrait of a marriage and a subtle horror fantasy. Miri and Leah are a married lesbian couple living in a British coastal city. Leah, a scientist with the Centre for Marine Enquiry, participates with her submarine crew in a deep-sea dive that is supposed to take three weeks but instead lasts six months, due to a malfunction, and Miri’s reactions range from helpless panic to anger to acceptance and mourning as she phones desperately to get answers from the Centre. (She even joins an online community of role-playing women who imagine their husbands are astronauts in space.) When Leah returns, she begins exhibiting such symptoms as the “silvering” of her skin, sleepwalking, loss of appetite, and a need to be near or in water. She also spends hours in the bathroom with the taps running and a sound machine playing ocean surf sounds, and bleeds frequently: from her nose, gums, and through her skin. While Miri at first looks for a logical explanation for these maladies, their source remains mysterious. Meanwhile, the two have stopped communicating and sleep in separate bedrooms, and it begins to seem as if Leah is transforming into some nonhuman creature. With echoes of Jules Verne, Thor Heyerdahl (whose work inspired Leah), H.P. Lovecraft, and the film Altered States, Armfield anchors the shudder-producing tale in authentic marine science and a deep understanding of human nature. This is mesmerizing. -
This haunting novel is beautifully written and artfully narrated by Annabel Baldwin and Robyn Holdaway. Leah, a marine biologist, returns from a submarine research mission that trapped her at the bottom of the ocean for six months. When she returns, her wife, Miri, is frustrated by inexplicable changes in Leah. In alternating chapters, Holdaway captures Leah's pre-mission excitement and her post-mission distraction, especially her seeming otherworldliness. In brooding, thoughtful tones, Baldwin precisely reflects Miri's heartache, isolation, and distress. She captures Miri's anguish and shock as Leah undergoes mysterious, horrific transformations. Thanks to fine performances, Leah's diary entries, Miri's flashbacks, and the unimaginable mystery of the deep ocean all seem real. Listeners won't want to miss this genre-bending love story. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
- Florence Welch Julia Armfield's weird and wonderful debut feels fresh (or rather, salty) . . . You hear a lot of people lamenting the death of innovation in contemporary fiction . . . and Armfield is a brilliant counterpoint.
- The Times 100 Best Books for Summer A wonderful novel, deeply romantic and fabulously strange. I loved this book.
- Susie Goldsbrough and Robbie Millen Beautiful, otherworldly, like floating through water with your eyes open.
- Sunday Times Reading this book is like diving into the deepest depths of the ocean and finding beautiful and disturbing wonders.
- Irish Times Our Wives is spooky and romantic: a gorgeous, lyrical novel that gets under your skin. Armfield leads you softly through a story that feels epic and intimate at the same time.
- Literary Review Tender, strange, lucid, and so assured – comparisons feel insubstantial, but if you love sci fi or love stories or books that defy labels or chew-your-arm-off good writing, this is for you.
- Cosmopolitan This haunting novel is beautifully written and artfully narrated by Annabel Baldwin and Robyn Holdaway...Thanks to fine performances, Leah's diary entries, Miri's flashbacks, and the unimaginable mystery of the deep ocean all seem real. Listeners won't want to miss this genre-bending love story. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award 2022
- Neel Mukherjee Frightening, otherworldly, but above all gripping.
- Sarah Waters Sharp, atmospheric, dryly funny, sad, distinctive . . . There is an almost spiritual endlessness to its quest. Like all good novels, it goes deep and then deeper again.
- Daisy Johnson Our Wives Under The Sea is a hypnotic and affecting love story - an exploration of intimacy and its opposites, as well as of incomprehension, absence and unfathomable uncertainty.
- Megan Hunter As in her stories, Armfield is extremely good at anatomising the women's relationship: the self-defensive blindnesses, the resentments and rituals and angers, grief for vanished joys – all the small moments of which lasting love consists. There are clever lines, everywhere, and wry, funny ones.
- Kirsty Logan Part bruisingly tender love story, part nerve-clanging submarine thriller. Creative innovation is there if you're looking for it — and to anyone lamenting its loss: order a copy . . . There is such tenderness in the precision of these observations of long-term love and such eerie estrangement when the uncanny intrudes. Eventually, the two moods fuse at the novel's heart-slicing, cinematic climax. I'll be thinking about it for ages — and checking the bathtub for grit.
- Sarvat Hasin If you're in the mood to cry, then Julia Armfield wrote the perfect book for ya . . . Armfield breaks your heart over and over (but in a good way, promise).
- Kiran Millwood Hargrave Julia Armfield's haunting debut novel deftly weaves a love story into creeping horror. . .Our Wives Under The Sea is a quiet triumph, but beware – this unsettling, saltwater-soaked story seeps deeper than you think.
- Kristen Arnett A strange, unnerving novel that wrongfoots you at every turn and invites you to think again about loss, absence, and transformation, Our Wives Under The...
