Book of the Week

Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

Recommended by Miss McLaren

Our Wives under the Sea is part love story, part ghost story, moving and disconcerting in equal measure. Miri’s wife, Leah, is a marine biologist who works for the Centre, a private research foundation that specialises in deep-sea exploration. Her missions keep her away for weeks at a time and Miri is used to being alone. But when catastrophe strikes and a systems failure sends Leah’s research sub plunging out of control into an uncharted ocean abyss, both women find themselves adrift, unmoored from their usual bearings, and grappling to make sense of what’s happening.

 

Trapped in the claustrophobic confines of the tiny but mysteriously intact sub, alive but unable to communicate with the upper world, Leah fights to survive and stay sane. With no knowledge of how, or whether, they will ever be rescued, she and her two crew-mates, Jelka and Matteo, start to question the purpose of their mission: are they the scientists, or the experiment’s subjects? Gradually, the eerie darkness of the underwater world starts to suggest a presence: are they really alone down there? Meanwhile back on the surface, Miri is equally (if less life-threateningly) marooned: distraught and numbed by her wife’s disappearance, not knowing whether to mourn or hope, she buries herself in memories of how she and Leah met and fell in love. But flashbacks to a happier past are juxtaposed with an increasingly disturbed and disorienting present. It's not a spoiler to tell you that the sub eventually re-surfaces, and Leah returns: but when she does, something seems different about her …

This is a gripping, unsettling and beautifully written novel. The plot is cleverly constructed: Armfield intercuts the two women's stories, gradually revealing what happened in the past (Leah's story) alongside its consequences in the present (Miri's), generating tension and suspense as the two storylines converge. Both women are engaging and memorable narrators, Leah full of awe and wonder at the marvels of the sea, whereas Miri is acerbic and cynically witty about the inanities of daily life on the surface, and the 'joys' of working from home. The novel is also full of fascinating facts and details - about the ocean, about what happens when a submarine sinks, about surviving in confined spaces, about the challenges that the strangeness of the natural world poses to traditional faiths and the hidden romance (maybe) at the heart of Jaws. It's also good on institutional callousness: confronted with Leah's increasingly bizarre behaviour, and Miri's anger and bewilderment, the Centre abandons them, placing them literally and metaphorically on hold.

 

The depths of the ocean, like the reaches of outer space, have often been fruitful ground for horror, and there are flickers of Lovecraftian monstrosity around the edges of this story as well as echoes of The Quatermass Xperiment, Nigel Kneale’s story of an astronaut who goes into space but comes back ‘wrong’. Our Wives Under the Sea nevertheless feels very contemporary: the themes of isolation and entrapment, of separation from those you love, and confinement with people you'd prefer to escape, evoke some of the bleaker elements of lockdown. But it also explores more universal themes, particularly the pressures that change and illness can place on relationships. As Leah's metamorphosis becomes increasingly strange and incomprehensible, the couple start to feel more separate together than they ever were apart. Uncanny, rather than outright scary, this is an absorbing and thought-provoking novel, that mingles the supernatural and the psychological to excellent effect: highly recommended.