Our Wives Under The Sea is certainly not a book that invites easy comparison. At times I was reminded of two, quite different films - Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, and James Cameron's The Abyss but frankly those references don't really give any meaningful suggestion of what this book is like. I read it more or less in one sitting, and although at times I was slightly bemused by what I was reading, it certainly held my interest. There is a strange eerie quality at times, especially in Leah's account of her time trapped under the water, and overall it is a book that I suspect will stay with me, not least as it is rather unusual. A solid 4 stars.

I loved this novel. I wouldn't say it's 'experimental' particularly, but it's inventive, and because of that, naturally, it won't appeal to everyone. There is a beautiful strangeness about it, but there is a sense that Armfield is in total control of this narrative. That said, the narrative asks a lot of the reader - there are gaps that the writer doesn't fill. I love that, but not everyone would, so questions about what exactly happened is left to us, the readers to try to not so much work out, but create ourselves. That sense of dangerous claustrophobia that, say, a deep sea-diver might actually feel is there, right there, in the narrative style.

The plot really is brilliant, compelling in every way. Loss: yes. Grief: yes. But don't go thinking it's depressing. It's unsettlingly beautifully done. Highly recommended.

I'm grateful to Netgalley for a pre-pub copy.

This is one of the best novels I’ve read in the last two years - I was already a fan of salt slow and had very high expectations and it really lived up to that! Told in short sections alternating between two narrators who are married to each other, this is a dark, compelling fable which is exceptionally written. Julia Armfield’s language is simple but her turn of phrase is extraordinary.

I read Armfield’s short story collection Salt Slow around this time last year and absolutely loved it. Her writing style is so unique and unlike anything I had ever read before. So when I got approved to read this, I was beyond excited.

Our Wives Under The Sea is Armfield’s first novel. It is told from the perspectives of Miri and her wife, Leah. Miri thinks she finally has her wife back, after Leah returns from a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. However, it soon becomes clear that Leah is not right after this mission. 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 realise that the life that they had might be gone.

This was absolutely brilliant! Armfield’s writing is so atmospheric, having me gripped from the moment I picked up this book. I loved the flicking perspectives of Miri and Leah, seeing the tragedy of the mission and Miri’s grasp of Leah slowly slipping away. Both characters are quite different from one another yet their love story makes so much sense. Their love for one another is so beautifully portrayed. And as the book progresses, it becomes more and more heartbreaking as a result. Their two perspectives make the book and their story so compelling. It is a deep examination on grief, love and loss.

Yet this book is also classically Armfield in the sense of its haunting nature. Her vivid descriptions of the deep sea mission and what is happening to Leah throughout will have your mouth hanging open on occasion and your skin crawling.

I could not recommend this book more. It is a beautiful blend of heart-wrenching, disturbing and atmospheric. Get Our Wives Under The Sea on your 2022 lists bookworms, it’s truly one you won’t want to miss.

Thank you so much to Picador & NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC.

When I heard about this novel, I knew I had to have it but I also knew I’d love it. If you enjoyed Armfield’s haunting collection of short stories Salt Slow, then you will relish this one too.
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Check this out:
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.
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Now tell me you’re not already drooling?!😀
It’s haunting in its writing style, it will creep under your skin, it will crawl all over you like a thousand crabs, it will mesmerise you like a jellyfish moving through water, it will be an unforgettable descent to the Hadal Zone.
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Told in dual points of view, alternating between Miri and Leah, I may have preferred Leah’s perspective a little more but that said, they complemented each other superbly. I found myself drawing parallels to the imagery of the last story in Salt Slow, majestic in its eeriness.
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The Big Blue soundtrack kept ringing in my ears, like a reminder of what lies under the sea.
Deeply recommend.
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Thank you to @picadorbooks and @netgalley for this ARC in return for my honest review. Our Wives Under The Sea is out March 3rd 2022. Put in on your sonar.

Miri is used to her wife Leah, a marine researcher, going on deep sea missions as part of her job. This time, though Leah returned months later than originally scheduled after the expedition has gone catastrophically wrong and it becomes quickly apparent that the Leah who returned, isn't the same person who left.

Leah is extremely withdrawn and spends much of her time in the bath, drinking salted water.

This dual perspective novel is in part a sapphic love story with Miri telling the present day story of Leah's return and recounting the back story of their relationship and marriage. Miri is keen to help Leah recover but each day sees a little more of her slipping out of her grasp.

The chapters that are told from Leah's perspective focus on the deep sea mission and what happened to them when they were stranded on the ocean floor for months. There is a constant seen of claustrophobia and foreboding in those scenes in the submarine and that part whatever they encountered in their deep sea mission has resurfaced in Leah.

This is a beautiful gothic novel of love, loss and grief and the secrets that lie hidden in the depths of the sea.

Huge thank you to @netgalley and @panmacmillian for this ARC. This is definitely one that I will want to pick up a copy on publication day of March 3rd!

I absolutely loved this book. It was creepy, tender and beautifully written, I fell in love with Leah and Miri’s love story and spent days wandering around thinking about the deep sea. I can’t wait to read it again when it comes out.

Leah left her wife, Miri, for a deep-sea expedition that went horrifically wrong. After being stuck there for months she comes home a completely different person. She spends most of her time sitting in bathwater and bleeding everywhere. Miri tries to do everything she can to help her become the person she used to be, but can't do that without understanding the trauma she went through.
It is told through 2 different POV's, Leah and Miri's. Leah's parts describing what happened being trapped in the submarine feel claustrophobic.
I loved it overall, but the ending was slightly confusing.

I am one of the few it would seem that just didn't appreciate this book. Remember at school when you had to analyse what something small like a blue vase in Dickens novels meant and what he wanted to portray by it? I used to think that I really didn't think an author with such grand themes in his books ever thought about the colour of a vase. Symbolism though, wasn't it? I still don't agree. With 'Our Wives' though, it is one long essay on symbolism. The sea drags you down, sucks you in, hides what is underneath etc. Tales of monsters and sharks and legends of Irish saints abound. I felt this short novel was just a long exercise in describing the sea. Lovely words and lyrical sentences but felt more like a creative writing exercise than a novel.

When Leah’s submarine vanishes without trace during her latest deep sea mission, her wife Miri accepts that she has lost her forever. She struggles emotionally, receiving very little information from Leah’s employers at the Centre, until one day – unexpectedly - Leah returns.
But Miri can’t be sure that the woman who is now living in their home is the same woman who she once called her wife. As well as subtle changes in her behaviour, there are more alarming physical transformations happening, things which provoke unsettling thoughts in Miri’s mind.

Our Wives Under the Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, and it’s taut and atmospheric, something that I think will appeal greatly to those who enjoy literary thrillers. The quality of writing is superb, with each chapter alternating between Miri and Leah’s viewpoint, so that bit by bit we gain an insight into each woman’s thoughts, slowly revealing details that make up a bigger picture. Leah’s entries tend to explain what happened during her time on the stricken vessel. Her descriptions of the increasingly bizarre behaviour of her two fellow crew members add to the sense of weirdness that pervades the pages of the book.

The vastness and depth of the oceans is a fear that has always bothered me – it’s called thalassophobia, trivia fans – and this short novel does a great job of tapping into that fear. Throughout Leah’s chapters she discusses her experience of being on a submarine in extremely deep, dark waters, and it’s terrifying and fascinating in equal measure. The relationship between the two women is also portrayed well, especially in Miri’s memories of when they first got together, highlighting a stark contrast between the relaxed dynamic of those early days and the current uneasy relationship between the two. Miri’s entries also document the present – the after-effects of Leah’s isolation beneath miles of black water – and how her wife’s change is accelerating both her physical state and also the real aspects of their marriage. This is a book about romance and grief, memory and body-horror, delivered as a nicely-paced literary novel with a neat structure.

Reminiscent of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (specifically Annihilation) and calling to mind the idea of the Changeling in folklore and legend, this terrific short novel has much to enjoy, both in the high calibre of its prose and the intriguing premise of it story. It comes highly recommended and marks Julia Armfield as an emerging writer whose career I will follow with interest.

One of my most highly anticipated reads and it did not disappoint. Much like her short story collection, salt slow, Julia Armfield's first novel is exquisitely written with beautiful, precise prose that makes you want to cry with how good it is, and also has a strange and compelling narrative. Our Wives Under the Sea is a haunting, lyrical horror story. Leah went on a research trip on a submarine that went horribly wrong and when she returns to her wife Miri, she's a different person, scaring Miri and causing her to confront her grief about her dead mother. It's smart and chilling and sad - I want to read it all over again.

Thank you to Picador for the ARC.

I loved salt slow, so I couldn’t wait for Julia Armfield’s first novel. Whilst it still has all the trademarks of salt slow; fantasy elements, characterisations that make you want to punch the air and incredible universal truths, I just couldn’t connect with the main characters in this book and for this reason it felt like an overlong short story. There is very little in the way of plot, amd the tension is not tightened at enough pace for my liking. That said, it is beautifully written and the ending is touching and satisfying.

Miri is used to her wife Leah disappearing beneath the waves of the ocean as part of her job as a marine researcher, but when Leah returns from an expedition that lasts for months longer than scheduled, part of her seems to have remained at the bottom of the ocean floor...

The themes of water and loss run strongly throughout in a compelling narrative that switches between Miri's current land-based perspective and to the fateful voyage with Leah under the water. I have read a few novels this year with water or sea creatures as their themes (including The Pisces and The Survivors) and this is definitely the most unusual of them all! To be completely honest, I found the chapters from Leah's perspective a little unsatisfying as it felt like a long time before we got to the "reveal" of the sea monster that we all know is lurking in the depths and by that point it felt a little anticlimactic because the deterioration of Leah was so clearly already underway.

Our Wives Under the Sea is an atmospheric and intriguing story, almost a modern gothic fairy tale. I loved the development of the story to show Leah's transformation to something other worldly. A wonderful, haunting and weird romantic novel of love, grief and memories with vibes of Han Christian Anderson's telling of The Little Mermaid.

Really enjoyed this book. It has a great mystery at its heart which keeps the plot moving at a good pace, and a tender and beautiful depiction of a relationship at its core which, for me personally, was the most captivating part.

I became a huge fan of Julia Armfield's writing the the moment I read the first page of her short story collection Salt Slow. I really loved its eerie and gothic atmosphere and the topics she chose to write each story.

That's why I thought I would totally love Our Wives Under The Sea, but I didn't happen. The novel has a beautiful writing but I felt it unbalanced: the plot begins to unfold on the last third of the book and it was too late for me. All characters experience minor development on the first half of the book and the story doesn't evolve, making it dull and boring to continue reading.

I really liked that the author chose water as the medium in which the story happens, but I found the aquatic facts and scenes a bit rough, as if they were not fully worked on. Our Wives Under The Sea leaves you with an unclosed ending, I expected to the mistery to be fully resolved, but it dind't happen.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan - Picador for the e-ARC!

Beautiful. I can't wait for this book to be published and for everyone else to have a chance to read it. A hauntingly beautiful modern gothic horror novel. I could not put this down and it was like nothing I'd read before.

i read and loved salt slow by julia armfield last year and i was very excited to read her first full length novel. following two women and their marriage after one of them returns from a submarine trip that went wrong, it's a slow unwinding of how they both cope with the event, how their lives do and don't work now, and what horrors might be lurking under the surface

i really liked the direction this book took, i had no idea where it might be going and there was something so intriguing and beautiful about the writing that i just couldn't stop reading

i've watched a loooot of horror films recently and yet the images in this book have stuck with me and haunted me more

Our Wives Under the Sea is easily the best fiction I’ve read for a few months. I really adored Salt Slow and have been very much looking forward to Julia Armfield’s first novel – I was relieved to find that this was easily as absorbing as I’d been hoping for.

It’s a creepy, haunting, twisting story about the sea and love. Julia’s writing is consistently lyrical and mesmerising, and I was really impressed with the way the narrative dealt with grief and that sense of aching loss. The novel opened up so many speculative strands that I reached the end of it with more questions than I started with, but I loved wandering down these threads and found myself easily trusting that the novel knew where it was going. I'm still finding some of the imagery and phrases running through my head a few days after finishing it.

I’ll definitely be pre-ordering (the cover of the physical edition looks beautiful) and am already looking forward to slowly reading through it again.

(Massive thanks to Picador and NetGalley for the e-ARC!)

I absolutely loved this book, such a page-turner, heart-warming and terrifying at the same time!
I really enjoyed how Armfield craftily interweaves Miri's loving, realistic and intimate memories of her wife before her mysterious trip with Leah's recollections of what actually happened under the sea.
This supernatural novel is a tight-paced tale of the many facets and expressions of unconditional love and the sense of loss when your favourite person changes in front of your eyes.
I'll recommend it to everyone I talk books with!

Wow how to describe this book!

I didn’t know what to expect from this book and I didn’t expect it to literally be about… wives being under the sea.

I loved Julia Armfield’s short story collection Salt Slow so I’d been so excited for her first novel.

Our Wives Under the Sea is told from the perspectives of Miri, after her wife Leah comes back from a submarine exploration gone wrong. It’s also interspersed with chapters from Leah’s diary on board the submarine.

This book is beautiful, deeply moving, incredible real yet wonderfully mythic. I found myself so connected to Miri, who is so well-realised.

Is it a fairy tale? Horror? Fantasy? Whatever genre is it wonderfully dark and atmospheric. I loved it