Our Wives Under The Sea
by Julia Armfield
Our Wives Under The Sea is Julia Armfield’s debut novel after her critically acclaimed short story collection salt slow. It centres around Miri and her wife Leah. Leah is a (sub-)marine biologist and Miri is used to lengthy field trips keeping Leah away from home. But then, a particularly challenging research voyage to the bottom of the ocean goes wrong and, when Leah is finally back, she has, evidently, changed both emotionally and physically. She is quieter, much less communicative, and starts displaying bizarre bodily symptoms.
The narration alternates between Miri and Leah. Miri primarily describes how she met Leah, their subsequent courtship and marriage, and the issues which have now beset their relationship, while Leah’s is essentially an account of the fateful deep-sea voyage.
It took me some time to get into this novel, despite it being relatively short. Not having read salt slow, I knew next to nothing about Armfield and her style. Sometimes, being thrown at the deep end actually works because you approach a work without prior expectations and prejudices. In this case, however, despite enjoying the undeniable brilliance of the language, I was feeling adrift until, mid-dive, I came across an interview with Julia Armfield in which she speaks about the themes and concerns of her work. Suddenly, it all made much more sense. That she is a fan of horror films hardly came as a surprise – this novel borrows much from the genre, whether it’s the body horror which Leah and Miri must face, or the dangers lurking in the darkest depths of the ocean. Armfield, however, confesses to “not being very plotty”, which helped me stop wondering whether there would be any great reveal as the novel progresses. I will try to avoid spoilers but will only state that a genre author would have made much, much more out of the purely narrative elements of the story, without necessarily sacrificing any of its other literary aspects. I was struck by the Catholic symbolism – it is not central to the novel, but elicited a flicker of recognition in me, which was confirmed when I learnt (from the same, very helpful, interview) that Armfield had a Catholic upbringing and that Catholic stuff “keeps coming up” in her work, despite her now finding it “bizarre and abstruse”.
Our
Wives Under The Sea is, in my view, best approached as a poetic
fable about love, loss and grief. The
novel expresses, often in striking (water-based) imagery, the wide-eyed wonder
of falling in love, at once a universal, yet very personal, experience:
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 and through different sets of eyes.
The
cause of Leah’s physical deterioration is inexplicable and mysterious, but it
can stand in for any relationship which breaks down or for the loss of loved
ones through debilitating disease or death. Certain aspects of the novel may
appear contrived (for instance, the five parts of the book, each named for the
various “zones” or layers of ocean, getting deeper with each section). However, but, at its best, I found Our
Wives Under The Sea to be not just well-crafted, but also a very moving, sensual
and unashamedly romantic debut.
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