When it comes to books, romance and relationships are a tough sell for me. I’m not a hopeless romantic, and I don’t come to a book for an elegant tale of passionate love. Our Wives Under the Sea takes a relationship and puts it at the forefront of the story, but it is far from what you might think of when you hear it categorized as queer fiction. It immediately won me over with its narration and approach to love.
Yes, the main characters are lesbians, and yes, that is important—but its importance is not simply its presence, but rather, its presence in the speculative fiction genre.
Bordering on horror, Our Wives Under the Sea captures the emotional complexity of love and the challenge of balancing a personal passion with a relationship. Leah’s adoration for the sea drives her to depths once undefined, in the most literal sense, and that intrigue she feels—that pull to the ocean—challenges the connection she has with Miri in ways neither of them expect.
While what happens to Leah when she returns feels like science fiction, the impacts of her trauma and her health look no different than reality. As a woman with a chronic illness, I know that when your body is degrading, the person that loves you degrades a little, too. How Julia Armfield manages to portray something so relevant and real in such a captivating and mysterious way takes talent.
One of the complaints I saw in reviews for this book talked about the tone and how it felt distant and left a lot to the reader’s imagination. I won’t deny the truth in that, but where some see that as a failure, I found it a crucial part of the story.
When the body and mind are tired or faced with unimaginable hardship, things are not softened and detailed. Life feels rigid and cold, and memories are often clogged with the silly moments that made life feel bearable. When your heart is aching for someone you love that you can’t help, as much as you’d like to, you think about the things they said that made you laugh and find sources of blame for all that’s gone wrong since. All of that happens in this book, and Miri repeatedly returns the audience to the sound of the television in the neighbors’ apartment upstairs because it is a constant in an experience that is anything but normal.
If you’re looking for a book that explores grief or invites conversation around making sacrifices for the people we love (and the passions that drive them), Our Wives Under the Sea is a great choice. If you’re looking for a book that explores the emotional highs and lows of a passionate and fierce love affair that makes your heart beat and your eyes water, this is not the book for you. If you are looking for classic horror imagery and scary creatures in the deep, this is not the book for you. This is a book that, in short, is about a woman grasping for the mundane while the floor beneath her feet crumbles.