This mode of expression is ubiquitous throughout. All they need is the right sort of skin.” This appears to refer to sea creatures, but the word choice allows for a much wider meaning. Take Leah’s observation that “things can thrive in unimaginable conditions.
Everything that happens on the surface has symbolic, metaphorical meaning beneath. Gothic elements are knitted throughout (“The deep sea is a haunted house: a place in which things that ought not to exist move about in the darkness” goes the tantalising first sentence). It is laid out in five sections, each corresponding to an ocean layer This might be a book about the sea, about depression, illness, grief. Miri, at a loss for what to do, spends hours on the phone trying in vain to reach Leah’s former employer. She rarely eats and is constantly in the bath listening to a sound machine. These women – Miri, and Leah – love one another, but since Leah’s return, silence has wormed “like a spine” into their life together. The book is about – what? A failing relationship, maybe. If it doesn’t appear on numerous prize lists, I’ll eat my hat. Reprising some of her previous preoccupations (liminal spaces, the proximity between the body and nature, death), Julie Armfield’s debut novel is sharp, atmospheric, dryly funny, sad, distinctive.
The prize-winning author of the short story collection Salt Slow brings a tale of two female spouses, one of whom has just returned from a deep-sea mission gone wrong. I have not stopped dreaming of Our Wives Under the Sea since I finished it.
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