Julia Armfield’s haunting dive through grief, love, fear and the supernatural.
Content warnings: minimal spoilers for the book, discussion of grief/loss
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is easily one of the best books I’ve read all year. The sea, lesbians, and psychological horror – three of my favourite things – all in one place? Sign me up!
But I’m getting ahead of myself: welcome to Queer Book Club, where I choose one of my favourite queer books and write out for you the impassioned, praiseful monologue my loved ones are already tired of hearing. Our Wives blew me away with how different it is to most horror I’ve read, and because of that uniqueness, it was by far my nº1 pick for October’s spooky book review.
It’s quite a short novel (perfect for reading in between never-ending coursework!), only 229 pages, but it packs an insane punch. The basic plot goes as follows: Miri and Leah are a married couple in their thirties, midway into their careers and slowly but surely building a life together. Leah is a marine biologist who works on submarines, which is very normal until one day it isn’t: something goes wrong and she becomes trapped at the bottom of the sea, presumed dead. After 6 months of grieving her wife, Miri suddenly gets a call saying that the craft has resurfaced and she can come pick Leah up. The story opens about a month after Leah’s return, and it is clear that (beyond the normal amount of PTSD one could expect) something is not quite right with her– and why won’t anyone from Leah’s employer pick up the phone?
Armfield’s use of narration and voice is *chef’s kiss*. The storytelling is split between Miri and Leah’s perspectives, and it’s a perfect way to make both narrators somewhat unreliable while slowly and suspensefully revealing all necessary information to the audience. They’re two halves of a narrative whole, but different in important ways: while both incorporate flashbacks wandering across their relationship and lives, Leah’s story is much more internal, heavy, and focussed on what happened while she was at sea, while Miri’s is outward-facing, emotionally volatile, and broader in scope. The author did a wonderful job of giving each character a distinctive voice and having that voice remain consistent, whether it’s in their own narration or as dialogue in the other person’s section. It’s also incredibly heartbreaking, because there is palpable distance and tension between the characters’ perspectives, but they are so clearly in love and both constantly thinking about each other.
More on that point: this novel dealt with loss and adult relationships in such a real but still delicate way– it was incredibly refreshing to read about a lesbian marriage at all, and especially about one that is established and loving but not perfect. Miri tries so hard to be mature and supportive despite being afraid and not understanding what’s happening, and she can’t always hold it together. She also gets petty, exhausted, frustrated to tears, terrified, resentful, shattered, or just straight-up furious. It was very real and relatable and I felt so deeply for her! The feeling that stuck out most throughout the book was the bone-deep wish that things would go back to how they were before– that pointless, childish, tearful desire to just not have to deal with whatever’s happening. Again, relatable as hell!! Julia Armfield did terrible things to my heart, which, from a lit perspective, translates to “has an incredible command of emotion”.
Our Wives is scary, but in a subtle psychological way that builds as you read, like pressure in the deep ocean. Actually, the book is explicitly structured that way: it’s split into four sections, called Sunlight Zone, Twilight Zone, Midnight Zone, and Hadal Zone. Those are four of the five depth zones in the open ocean, in order from shallowest to deepest. As you sink into the sea, there is progressively less light and more pressure, and the creatures get stranger. All to say that as you read this novel, you get progressively less hopeful for a good ending and more afraid of submarines, and things do get much stranger! It’s a very rewarding and well-paced crescendo, and makes me feel the same way the Interview With the Vampire intro music does (you know the bit where the orchestra is tuning and slowly gets loud and off-key but in a cool way? Go listen to it, anyway). Another comparison for those who get it– Our Wives really reads like an episode of The Magnus Archives, which you should definitely go listen to if you like supernatural horror. The author was not afraid of letting things go unexplained, and I always appreciate when an author trusts their audience like that. When I picked this up I had no idea what I was getting into, and I’m glad of that, so I’ll let you go in mostly blind. I will, however, say that I was not at all expecting the twists, which are narratively satisfying and also had me absolutely shouting. Fair warning: I had anxiety dreams after finishing this book at 3am, which did not diminish my love for it but rather made me admire its power even more. In fact, the mirroredness of fear and love, as in desperately loving something that terrifies you, is a central theme, so I guess I really got it.
This novel is gorgeously written, layered with metaphor, and infinitely interpretable. It’s modern and realistic without being chatty or seeming unintelligent, and all that deep emotion comes across perfectly in the language. It isn’t exactly a light read, but it is a great one. I recommend it aggressively and wholeheartedly for anyone who loves the ocean, strangeness, lesbians, stunning writing, or all of the above! If you do read it and love it, hit me up, I’d love to talk about it– and if you read it and hate it I can’t be held liable, so take it up with someone else.