#Our Wives Under the Sea

[ltmustbebunnies]

“What you have to understand is that things can thrive in unimaginable conditions. All they need is the right sort of skin.”

- Julia Armfield

[i-will-avenge-my-ghost]

i desperately desperately need to join some form of julia armfield fandom space like literally anything especially for private rites i'm gonna actually throw up please tell me something exists

[booked-n-bitten]

currently reading our wives under the sea by julia armfield & had to make a post with the vibes of the first 75 or so pages. have you read this one? what did you think?

[soul-wanderer]

metaphor this, metaphor that, but I still feel irrational anger at the ending of Our Wives Under The Sea okay

[gossumurrr]

Spoilers for “Our Wives Under the Sea” don’t read this unless you want to have everything about this book ruined for you forever and ever

I just finished “Our Wives Under the Sea” by Julia Armfield and it’s the most soul-crushing book I’ve read this year. I know it’s supposed somewhat of a horror story, but I felt more sadness and discomfort than fear. The way Leah slowly deteriorated over the course of the story was hard to sit through, soon getting to the point where she’s not living a life, but just existing in the bathtub. The predicament that both Leah and Miri go through reminds me of the process of losing a loved one to a terminal illness, and knowing that there’s nothing you can do to cure them, just make things less painful for them.

The flashbacks especially to before Leah left for the exhibition made reading the scenes in present day more gut wrenching, as it made me also miss the person Leah once was, and hoping that whatever was going on with her would sort itself out and let Miri and Leah finally be happy together.

And the ending. The fucking ending. That’s the most gut wrenching part of the whole book. It basically ends with Miri finally letting Leah go, taking her to the sea and allowing her to dissolve into the water. And then chapter after this was the submarine that Leah was in finally surfacing after being in the dark, depths of the ocean for months. What added an additional blow to the previous chapter was that it’s clear that at that point, all Leah wanted to do was leave the ocean, and see her Miri again, only for her to return there in her final moments. It’s both beautiful and tragic because Leah has has such a great passion and respect for the ocean, and in the end she finally becomes one with it, but she’s also leaving the place she so desperately wanted to leave. And there’s also the fact that she might have not been able to enjoy her final months with Miri because she was definitely not coherent during all that time, but it was clear that she still loved her.

Maybe it’s because I’m a queer lady, but the fact that this story is happening to two queer women just adds an extra kick for me. My feelings mostly centers around the fact that it’s hard for queer couple to exist in a heteronormative society (which the book speaks of), but to lose your partner in such a way, someone who you relate with and hold such deep, intimate connections with must feel so incredibly isolating. And the fact that the ending somewhat shares similarities to the the Hans Christian Anderson ending of The Little Mermaid (the one where she turns into sea foam) which also has queer elements to it, is the cherry on the top of the queer tragedy sundae.

[medusa-unleashed]

Fuck, I just finished Our Wives Under the Sea and it’s so damn good

[taweretsdagger]

my hold on julia armfield’s new book is up lfg

[proceduralbob]

I have always felt there is something knowable about the sea, something within comprehension, and I knew that I couldn’t allow the opposite to be true.

Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield

[hatefulbread]

our wives under the sea by julia armfield

3.75/5 stars.

***some spoilers in describing the end plot! read with caution.

i wanted and still want to give this book 5 stars, and perhaps i will come back and do just that after the ending digests a little more.

notable quotes that i'm still ruminating on;

"...the error in my reasoning was to assume that alone was somewhere you could go, rather than somewhere you had to be left."

"standing on the edge, i could feel it. the chill of the air, aching to become something else."

"when you stop underreacting, the horror is unique because it is, unfortunately, endless."

"...most things we believe will turn out to be ridiculous in the end."

our two narrators are miri and leah, a married (wlw!!! <3) couple who seem to live a very normal life. miri deals with a job that's unfulfilling and leaves her bored, leah struggles with cleaning up after herself, they have inconsiderate upstairs neighbors who blast game show TV at ungodly hours in the morning... this norm changes when leah, a marine biologist, is assigned to go on a 3-week-long research trip into the depths of the ocean. neither miri nor leah bat an eye at this, as leah often goes on trips for semi-long periods of time. but after 3 weeks and no leah, miri starts to spiral into numbness without her. after 5 months and no leah, miri starts to believe leah is dead. after 6 months, leah finally returns, horrifically changed and reluctant to talk. she spends her days soaking in the bath, craving copious amounts of salt, and not leaving the apartment. eventually, grotesque things start happening to leah's body, but she refuses to seek help. miri is jolted into even more loneliness with leah back than when she was gone. trying to piece together what happened to leah in those 6 months of being stranded in that submarine, we watch leah succumb to her unknown experience, and miri accept that the woman she loves has become a completely different person.

this book is painstakingly beautiful. the writing is unmatched. i've never been left sobbing by so many chapter closings. the way armfield writes the two narrators differing perspectives per chapter is so exact; it's still armfield in her gorgeous, poetic capture of grief-- but it's also miri... and it's also leah. she so wonderfully executes the way these two describe their experiences, every little difference they have is so obvious. miri's voice is miri's voice, leah's is so completely leah's. many author's struggle to capture the difference in character voice when writing in such a way, but armfield has mastered it.

for all the shivering prose this book brought, i felt unsatisfied with the ending. i understood why miri was led to do what she did (trying not to spoil too much), that was very clear and well justified. but i wanted to know EXACTLY!!! what happened to leah in that submarine in this way-> WHY was she physically changing, did miri and juna ever find out, where did the centre go, what happened to matteo? there were a lot of loose ends i think should have been tied up before closing this story out, and that is the ONLY thing i didn't love.

feelings;// heartbreak, loneliness, isolation, reluctance, acceptance.

[armandyke]

Hold my hand, we've made it to the end of my 2024 book reviews.

61) Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix (4.5⭐)

Grady Hendrix is very quickly carving out a place in my heart. This one wasn’t quite as good as How To Sell A Haunted House for me, but still really great. 

This story is a really fun approach to the final girl concept, basically saying “what if all those 80’s slasher horrors were based on true events, and the final girls were real people?” and then looks at where these women are at years or decades on from their own personal nightmares. It’s funny because at face value it’s such a goofy concept, but the author keeps everything so grounded in reality that it never feels that way. The story was fun and fast paced and I really enjoyed it, and though I will say the ending felt slightly anticlimactic, that didn’t really spoil my enjoyment of it as a whole. 

Also, not to praise men for the bare minimum but I do think Grady Hendrix does a great job of writing women. When I read his other book I didn’t even realise the author was a man until I looked him up, and the same applies here. It gives whatever the opposite of “men writing women” energy usually is. 

62) Garth Marenghi’s Incarcerat by Matthew Holness (4⭐)

Garth Marenghi is a bit of a hard one to sell to people, because I feel like we’re about four levels deep into the lore at this point so I’ll just keep it short for this review and if you want to know more about the gmcu (Garth Marenghi cinematic universe) then send me a message and I’ll be happy to explain. 

For now I’ll just say that I enjoyed this book a lot, but it wasn’t as good as the first one. 

63) Feast While You Can by Onjuly Datta and Mikaella Clements (5⭐)

Ohohoho. 

Another sapphic horror, thank you Jesus. This one follows a woman named Angelina, who grew up in and loves her tiny, closed off home town, but one day finds herself possessed by the monster that’s been living at the bottom of a cave. The monster wants to feed on her memories, and the only thing that seems capable of staving it off is her brother’s ex, who also happens to be the most beautiful butch to ever grace this earth. 

This was gorgeously written, a great story, great twists that I didn’t predict, and the climax was just perfect. I’m trying so hard to be restrained here because I could yap on about this for ages but then I’d start spoiling things and I think this book should be experienced as blind as possible. 

Side note there’s also a lot of explicit sex in this so if that’s something you avoid then this might not be for you. 

64) The Whistling by Rebecca Netley (4.5⭐)

Classic “woman moves to an isolated Scottish island to take on a nanny position and finds that everything here is fucking weird” story. 

Did this book do anything particularly unique? No not really, but I did give it an extra half a star because I didn’t correctly guess who the true bad guy was until the very last second, which always adds to the fun. If you want some classic ghosty, creepy house horror to read then this is definitely a good one to check out.

65) Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (4⭐)

One thing about me is that I love the trope of someone coming back wrong. Whether it’s back from the dead, back from space, or, in this case, back from an extended, unplanned trip to the very bottom of the ocean. 

Not A lot I can really say about this one without really getting into spoilers, but I really liked it. I really enjoyed the writing style and just… the way things and feelings were described. It was really well done, really creepy. A lot of things were sort of left unexplained but I think that was intentional rather than an oversight.

66) Scuttle by Barnaby Walter (DNF)

If I had a nickel for every bad spider themed horror book I read this year, I would have three nickels, which isn’t a lot but again it’s weird that it happened three times.

You remember The Dinner Guest by B P Walter? Turns out this was written by the same guy. And you remember how I said that book was great except for the parts where we focused in on the teenage boy? Well…

This book is dual pov, written partly from the perspective of the dad and partly from the perspective of his teenage son, and, yeah, I had the same issues multiplied tenfold. I think I got about a quarter of the way through before tapping out, because it was just cringe. Teenagers do not act or speak in the ways they were in this book and it just made reading it impossible for me. On top of that, the story was nonsensical. I won’t spoil it for you but just know I skipped to the end to satisfy my curiosity and ended up laughing out loud.

67) Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova (5⭐)

This was another book that rewired my brain chemistry, and I really don’t know if it hit me the way it was intended to, but my god did it hit me. 

The story is predominantly about grief. A mother cuts a chunk of lung from the body of her dead son, and ends up raising it until it eventually grows into a person… sort of. The creature (Monstrilio) is blood thirsty, wild, and always hungry, but with the help of her family and close friend, she is able to mold him into roughly the shape of her deceased son. 

The book is split into four parts, each from a different perspective as we follow Monstrilio’s development. The first part is from the mother’s perspective as she removes her son’s lung and is able to give it a new kind of sentience. Then we follow her friend Lena’s perspective as the lung becomes sort of a wild animal that they have to domesticate. We follow some of Monstrilio’s adolescence through the perspective of his father, and then the final part is told from Monstrilio’s perspective. 

As I said, the book is about grief, about the ways it impacts this family over the course of Monstrilio’s upbringing, and it would have easily been a 4 star read from me anyway. But my god. Monstrilio’s perspective at the end hit me where I fucking live. I won’t give anything away here, but if you’re someone who feels like they constantly have to put on a mask to hide some “monstrous” part of themselves, this book will punch you right in the gut. In a positive way. Sort of. 

68) Revival by Stephen King (4⭐)

You know I couldn’t abandon my boy for too long. This book was such classic Steven King, focused almost entirely on the long, drawn out building of suspense before punching you in the face multiple times in quick succession in the final chapters. 

If you haven’t heard of this one before, the book is essentially a man retelling the story of his life, revolving predominantly around a priest he met as a child and then continued running into throughout his adult life. This priest has a passion for electricity, specifically its healing powers, and I promise you it does not go the way you’re expecting it to. Okay, it sort of does, but then it really doesn’t. This book almost got 3 stars until I read that final climax, shook my head solemnly, and said “Steven, you crazy son of a bitch, you got me again”. 

69) Blight by Tom Carlisle (3.5⭐)

More surprise queer horror! The queerness is not at all the focal point in this book, but it was a nice touch. 

This book is about fae, and not the kind from ACOTAR. I will say one slight issue I had with this book was that the antagonistic fae king is known amongst the village folk as “the Tall Man” and described as wearing a top hat, which kept making me think of the benadryl meme. That aside, this was an enjoyable story. The classic “fairy comes to collect the firstborn children of the household” story. It was nothing special and didn’t do anything particularly unique for me, but it was a fun read. 

My main hangup with this book was that we went back and forward in time a lot, but there was no real indicator for this. I wish there could have been a “past” and “present” indicator along with the chapter numbers or something just to make it a bit easier to follow.

70) The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw (5⭐)

Loved, loved, loved. This was SUCH an improvement on the previous novella I read (Nothing But Blackened Teeth). This had everything I want from horror novellas. I absolutely love the way this author writes prose, and this novella is predominantly prose because the main character is a mermaid who can’t speak for about half of the book. This story is essentially about a mermaid and her unlikely companion (a nonbinary plague doctor no less) who find themselves stumbling upon a woodland society of people who worship three “saints”. It’s hard to give much more than that without giving up the whole plot as it is a very short book, but so much action is packed in, and it doesn’t feel like anything is rushed or left hanging. It’s an absolute little gem.

[nonas-third-tantrum]

locked tomb fans if you haven’t read Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield you’re missing out:

woman’s wife goes to sea and comes back wrong? check

horror elements? check

grief? by the bucketful

people who are only mostly dead haunting the narrative? you betcha

women who are insane about each other? YEAH

[lycanish]

gay body horror? its more likely than you think

[vlindervin7]

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

0ne of the best books I read this year and a new favourite. Beautifully written and expertly crafted, this novel tells the story of married couple Miri and Leah. Leah is a marine biologist who embarked upon, what should have been a routine research trip underseas, but came back from it silent and altered. Miri, her wife, tries to take care of her while drowning in questions without answers and still processing the passing of her mother who suffered from dementia.

This novel is not just one thing. It's part (very light imo and I say this as someone who does not like horror) horror novel about a deepsea journey gone wrong, part exploration of grief and loss and seeing a loved one slowly disappear due to trauma and mental illness and being powerless in the face of it, but most of all it's a story full of tender and tragic love, between two women, between a woman and the sea, and between a mother and daughter.

One of the first things that struck me about this book is the structure of it. The novel consists of five parts that reflect the five different sea levels, ranging from 'The Sunlight Zone' to 'The Hadal Zone'. The different levels represent the actual levels Leah and her crew cross during their mission, they represent the development of the plot, but they also reflect the mental state Miri and Leah find themselves in, sinking deeper and deeper, while the story and emotions become darker and darker.

The writing is beautiful, quite simple, but so rich. It breaks your heart in a quiet and slow way, wearing away at its edges until you're reading the last chapters with tears in your eyes. The plot is quite minimal and consists for a large part of characters being trapped in a situation they cannot escape, but despite this it left me on the edge of my seat, desperately wanting to know more.

"I want to explain her in a way that would make you love her, but the problem with this is that loving is something we all do alone through different sets of eyes. It's nearly impossible, at least in my experience, to listent to someone telling a story about their partner and not wish they'd get to the point a little faster. (...) It's easy to understand why someone might love a person but far more difficult to push yourself down into that understanding, to pull it up to your chin like bedclothes and feel it settling around you as something true."

And Julia Armfield managed to do this. I fell in love with Miri and Leah through each other's eyes, and this is why the emotions were so very strong.

There's a lot more to be said about the metaphorical nature of the submarine, how it represents being trapped in your own head with no way out, how it turns some people violent, while others self-destructive, how seeing a loved one struggle with trauma, depression, or dementia is like watching them sink beneath the waves while you're stuck on land, how the more you sink, the darker it gets, but that could be the subject of an entire essay, so I won't get into that for now. This review is long enough.

Maybe this book isn't for everyone but I would still highly recommend you give it a try, it's the only book that's made me cry all year.

follow me on goodreads if you want <33

[claireandadafan]

miri’s name meaning “bitterness of the sea” and her being bitter, in a way, that this leah that came back isn’t her leah. it’s some changed, new version of her. and miri doesn’t know what to do. how to love this new leah, she doesn’t have anything to follow, doesn’t know how to communicate with leah.

i think leah was her rock for a lot of her issues mentally, her struggles. and now that leah has changed, she doesn’t know much of what to do.

to me, i think that miri’s love for leah died slightly when she accepted to herself that leah died. so, when she was told leah came back, that love did to, like a white flash of light, as the book said (or something along those lines). however, when she realized that this leah wasn’t the leah she yearned for those 6 months but a new version… she couldn’t will herself to find the love for her. she gave up. i don’t think she did it purposely because she’s mean or evil, i just think she couldn’t handle it all. she’s very anxiety ridden, she just couldn’t accept that leah had changed, couldn’t accept that she needed to love this new leah.

and leah, on the other hand, yearned for miri. miri, miri, miri. so, when she came back, she yearned for that love again. miri’s voice, miri’s hand brushing over her hair, the bitterness that came with kissing her from the way miri bit her lip. she just wanted it. and when she saw how… detached miri was. she couldn’t handle it either. she was so traumatized from the ocean, from jelka, from everything. and she needed love, needed acceptance for this new self that she become. she couldn’t become old leah. yet, miri didn’t accept her. but who did? the ocean. so, she let herself melt, turn into water. because the ocean loved her more than miri did at that moment.

tldr: bitterness of the sea because miri was so bitter that she couldn’t have her leah back. and she couldn’t let herself love this new leah. so leah, who yearned for miri’s love after coming back, let herself wither away, turning into water, becoming one with the ecosystem, because, she found, that’s who loved her despite it all.

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Adult SFF Books Bracket: Round 3

Book summaries below:

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

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 is not the same. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has brought part of it back with her, onto dry land and into their home.

Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp.

Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, 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.

Horror, contemporary, literary fiction, science fiction, adult

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own.

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.

Dystopia, speculative fiction, science fiction, adult

[taweretsdagger]

realized how much this song reminds me of our wives under the sea and uhhhh i’m gonna need a minute!!!