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Our Wives Under the Sea
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (NPR, The Washington Post, Lit Hub, The Telegraph, Goodreads, Tor.com, them, and more)
A FINALIST for the LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD and GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD "A deeply strange and haunting novel in the best possible way...An impressive and exciting debut novel that may leave you thinking about your own relationships in a new light." --NPR "Shocking...Achingly poetic...Sharp and beautiful as coral polyps...Armfield exercises an exquisite--even sadistic--sense of suspense." --Ron Charles, The Washington PostLeah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp. By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, Our Wives Under the Sea is an exploration of the unknowable depths within each of us, and the love that compels us nevertheless toward one another.
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Community Reviews
Didn’t feel like it pulled me in, and the ending was very predictable and anticlimactic. However, I loved the ocean imagery and the characters are very well written.
4/5 stars
Miri's wife Leah has just come back from a submarine exploration that suspiciously lasted longer than it was supposed to. Besides this oddity and the total secrecy around what happened, Leah has come back wrong and whatever it is it's changing her in unimaginable ways.
The book is told in two points of view. We have Miri's, set in the present where she struggles to understand and connect with this new version of her beloved wife, and Leah's which narrates what happened to her and the crew of the submarine during those six months they were underwater. I found this book to be mostly an exploration of grief and the grieving process, Leah isn't really dead but she might as well be. And while I enjoyed the cosmic horror elements of the story, they're definitely not the center of this tale.
The prose was very beautiful and I found a lot of very quotable lines that impacted me. I think you have to be on the mood for this a bit, because it can feel quite slow, but the pacing mostly holds and keeps you reading. I would have liked a bit more horror than what we got, but that's just me.
Sometimes I think you prefer it down there, I had said to her, holding her face in my hands and wondering whether I meant it to sound like a joke or reproach, you go so deep you forget you're supposed to come back
Miri's wife Leah has just come back from a submarine exploration that suspiciously lasted longer than it was supposed to. Besides this oddity and the total secrecy around what happened, Leah has come back wrong and whatever it is it's changing her in unimaginable ways.
The book is told in two points of view. We have Miri's, set in the present where she struggles to understand and connect with this new version of her beloved wife, and Leah's which narrates what happened to her and the crew of the submarine during those six months they were underwater. I found this book to be mostly an exploration of grief and the grieving process, Leah isn't really dead but she might as well be. And while I enjoyed the cosmic horror elements of the story, they're definitely not the center of this tale.
The prose was very beautiful and I found a lot of very quotable lines that impacted me. I think you have to be on the mood for this a bit, because it can feel quite slow, but the pacing mostly holds and keeps you reading. I would have liked a bit more horror than what we got, but that's just me.
the voices, the burning smell, the religious undertonesâ¦was hell underneath them down there?? were they in hell?? am I crazy?
AND THEN the voices from the TV ABOVE them when they were homeâ Miri has NEVER seen those neighbors and just adjusts to ignore it but Leah asks them to turn it down and says theyâre kind even though they make ZERO change to the volume. and it doesnât bug her until she comes back from under the sea.
maybe Iâm bonkers and the curtains are just blue, or maybe I just cracked this religious allegory about grief wide open
gorgeous writing either way. felt like an A24 film on the little screen in my head. cannot stop picturing that giant eye. itâs officially the season to jump back into horror
AND THEN the voices from the TV ABOVE them when they were homeâ Miri has NEVER seen those neighbors and just adjusts to ignore it but Leah asks them to turn it down and says theyâre kind even though they make ZERO change to the volume. and it doesnât bug her until she comes back from under the sea.
maybe Iâm bonkers and the curtains are just blue, or maybe I just cracked this religious allegory about grief wide open
gorgeous writing either way. felt like an A24 film on the little screen in my head. cannot stop picturing that giant eye. itâs officially the season to jump back into horror
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