Cover Image: Our Wives Under The Sea

Our Wives Under The Sea

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Member Reviews

🌊 Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield was a haunting, devastating exploration of the ache of love, separation, and missing someone right in front of you. Diving to the depths of heartache and sea lesbians.

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I loved this so much. eerie and unsettling, sadly funny and beautiful, melancholy and emotional. I went into it knowing it was ambiguous and so I was completely okay with the lack of answers. unforgettable!

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Miri’s wife Leah is a marine biologist. When she returns home after one of her trips to the sea bed goes wrong, Miri begins to notice changes in her, behavioural and physical. And things begin to get really creepy.

But this is far from a horror story, in my opinion. It is a tragedy, a love story, a romance and a beautifully-portrayed yearning for a past that can never be again, for a love that will never be what it was. It’s almost like a fairy tale – but in the style of the Brothers Grimm rather than Disney.

It’s emotional without being melodramatic; the writing is poignant. It may be a bit slow for some, a bit weird, a bit reflective, a bit inward-looking, but that was its appeal for me. It was a slow build, a slow burn, that revealed the true horror at its centre with a timing that made things feel inevitable, the way that Miri must have felt.

Highly recommended if you like novels that are unusual, creepy and clever.

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A spooky gothic tale about a woman who returns from a trip at the bottom of the ocean and she isn't the same woman who left. It's dark, its eery, and it is full of intrigue.

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I really liked this book. It’s pretty slow going but it’s beautifully written. It’s full of grief, love and loss which is so heartbreaking. We alternate between the two main characters narratives. Through Leah we hear the past, the relationship and being stuck under the ocean. And through Miri, we hear about the now. How everyday is a struggle, of what life is like now Leah has returned. Both narratives have been well researched. This is the debut novel by Julia Armfield and I cannot wait to read what this author writes next.

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A really touching and beautiful, lyrical novel about grief. Enjoy is not the right word. Wanted it to be a little spookier but that’s more on what I was expecting than anything else.

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This book is a masterpiece. It's haunting and propulsive and has stayed with me after reading it. I love the mystery and intrigue about what actually happened under the sea, and how the characters develop once back on land and realising that they're not quite who went down in the submarine. Very clever writing that felt like it had the impact of a much longer novel.

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Such a beautifully written novel, reminiscent of Kirsty Logan and Daisy Johnson. With an otherworldly quality, this unsettling and deeply memorable novel shows real promise.

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Julia Armfield writing is really haunting and beautiful. Just like her pervious work, Salt Slow, loved this one too. This is also an aching sapphic love story and it was so beautiful

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Okay, I have very little to say about Our Wives Under the Sea. Objectively, I can see that it was beautifully written and the story was unusual and unique. Personally, I didn't get it/enjoy it. I know there is a big metaphor continuing throughout the story but I just didn't get it.

People will love this book. It just wasn't for me.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is available now.

For more information regarding Julia Armfield (@JuliaArmfield) please visit www.juliaarmfield.co.uk.

For more information regarding Pan Macmillan (@panmacmillan) please visit their Twitter page.

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A slow burn, poetically written, haunting story of love, loss, and grief - I think it's all the more chilling for the fact that it isn't a showy, dramatic horror but an insidious one. I loved how the relationship between the two women was written, and watching that relationship change and disintegrate was quietly brutal.

A beautifully written book that pushes the boundaries of what it means to write horror. I will be thinking about this one for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for granting me a free ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

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Exquisite writing and having taken my time with this book, as it’s quite short, felt it packed a punch. Resonated on so many levels with me and I’m still haunted by the ambiguous ending. Thoroughly recommend.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers Pan Macmillan for this ARC.

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Well, this was quite beguiling. I wasn't sure I'd think so after being what feels like the only person who didn't ravish Salt Slow (the short story collection that was published by Armfield prior to this) with rapturous praise - the stories were just to uneven for me and for every piece of brilliance there I found an equal miss.

The writing in this is just gorgeous. Each word seems precisely chosen and you can see the short story writer in her here. It's very impressive that she could keep up this razor sharp focus for a whole novel.

Miri tells the us about what is happening now that her wife has returned from a research mission, under the ocean in a submarine, that went wrong. Can Leah and her return to their life that was filled with beautiful mundane moments? Or, has the experience formed a fissure in their lives where nothing can be the same now?

Miri's chapters are interspersed with Leah's. Leah tells us what happened while submerged. The trip that was meant to be three weeks but stretched to six months wrought severe damage on her and her two shipmates. Leah's chapters are tense and had me absolutely gripped.

Miri's are quieter, by design, but somehow just as psychologically challenging.

I would say that if you want everything wrapped up neatly this may not be your ideal read.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. I'm sorry it took me so long to read this. I won't sleep on Armfield again!

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Writing exquisite. Sense of foreboding excellent. Atmosphere cranked up to the max. Underwater trivia is completely my jam. Short chapters that are gut punching. What I loved the absolute most though were the sections of Leah and Miri explaining why they loved each other, the quirks of their relationship, the things that should drive a person mad and yet you accept as part of the intricacies of a loving partnership. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

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I put off reading this for a long time because I loved Salt Slow and I wanted to love Our Wives Under the Sea as much. I didn't, but that's okay. Told from the perspectives of Miri and Leah, this follows Leah as she goes into deep ocean on a routine research mission that very swiftly goes wrong; and Miri, six months later, as she tries to understand what's happening to her wife and why she's so different. I actually wanted more from Our Wives, and found it a little slow: that's not a statement I usually make about novels, but with speculative fiction I think I do prefer a slightly faster plot. But anyway, I really liked this; the writing about their relationship is lovely, the prose is obviously beautiful and so polished, and the premise is as good as the stories in Salt Slow. If there had been more stuff in this – more plot development, a bit more action, maybe more contextualisation of their world – then I would have loved this, I think. As it is, I'm still hugely impressed by the quality of her prose and I know I will absolutely read every book she ever publishes.

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An exceptional book that is at one beautiful, haunting, and deeply disturbing. Not a novel for anyone who likes a neatly tied up conclusion that explains everything, as you will still be left wondering just what one earth was going on. Julia Armfield writes beautifully and I would read anything she writes.

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An unsettling, beautifully written literary horror that was ultimately gut-wrenching and unnerving in equal measures! I must admit it wasn't an instant hook when I first sat down to read this, but as I continued it definitely won me over. I thoroughly enjoy a good dark literary horror, and I thought this sits within the genre well.

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Our Wives Under the Sea was one of those books where I felt ‘It’s not you, it’s me’. Like it was my fault that I somehow didn’t try hard enough to connect with it.
It’s not as if the book didn’t hold my attention. At no point did I feel that I couldn’t be bothered reading on. I was far too curious about just what had happened to Leah.
But, on balance, there were more things that distracted me, rather than held my attention.
There’s something about Julia Armfield’s writing style that just sits awkwardly with me. It’s like her sentences are too carefully crafted and because of that they seem laboured and a bit jarring and, for me, disrupt the flow, which is just off-putting.
Also, I felt that both Leah and Miri’s narrative had no difference in tone or style, and therefore, both characters seemed a bit one-dimensional and hard to really connect with.
I think my favourite part of the whole book was the forum where women wrote imaginary scenarios where their husbands were lost on space missions. Now that is something I would read!!
Sadly, the ending just felt a bit ‘meh’ and I was left feeling slightly cheated.

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Oh, my word. What a book this is.!

Telling the story of married couple, Miri and Leah from each woman's point of view when a deep-sea research trip Leah is assigned to goes wrong, stranding her and her colleagues beneath the sea.

I found myself quickly invested and unwilling to put the book down and reading for long stints at a time - devouring it in just a couple of days (in truth it could easily have been a one sitting kind of book if my life allowed for that kind of time!).

The way in which Miri talks about the way her relationship with Leah evolved, contrasts beautifully with the strange kind of peril Leah faces during and after. The language throughout is soothing, poetic and pulls you along marvelously. Belief was suspended entirely for me, I just wanted more from the author's imagination.

I'm not sure what I expected, but I didn't imagine myself to be quite so swept away. It's a stunning book, one of my favourite titles this year.

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Very well written - was a bit overwritten at times for my personal taste (100% just my personal opinion). A lot of philosophical, poetic musing and water-based metaphors. A good blend of the gothic and queerness which feels very contemporary and popular these days. She's clearly a very talented writer - I know a lot people who really admire her work. This didn't connect with me personally due to how overtly lyrical and heavy-handed it sometimes felt, but I would definitely be very interested in seeing what she writes next.

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