There is a peculiar kind of sadness in telling a love story backwards, starting with its end. There’s the tenderness and domesticity of an established relationship, and the inevitable fact of its eventual nonexistence. This love story captures a relationship by chronicling its end. Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield’s debut novel, is a captivating tale told in alternating perspectives about a couple, Miri and Leah, the latter of whom goes out on a deep-sea exploration and comes back irrevocably changed. The book weaves Miri’s struggle to reconcile the slow slipping away of her wife, Leah, with Leah’s recounting of the events of the deep-sea submersible dive.
A Haunting Gothic About Family in (Climate) Crisis: Private Rites by Julia Armfield Review
As an avid reader of all of Julia Armfield’s fiction, I was eager to pick up her newest novel. From the author of Our Wives Under the Sea (2022), Private Rites (Fourth Estate, 2024) promised to be poignant, haunting, and literary. Set in a future world where environmental disaster has flooded much of the world with ceaseless rains, threeRead More
A Meditation On Grief Through a Speculative Lens: Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link I’ve seen this book mainly categorised as horror but after reading it, it feels more like a speculative fiction with elements of horror and sci-fi in it. This book transcends genres: that’s the mark of a phenomenal read! I went into this story expecting an action-packed, horror-strewn plotline and found something muchRead More
Danika reviews Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link I am a scaredy cat and avoid horror most of the year. But when September and October come around, I find myself being pulled towards all things creepy, witchy, and thriller-y. Of course, queer horror goes on the top of my TBR in those months. Fun fact: I’veRead More
Rachel reviews Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Stunning, poignant, and totally unputdownable, Julia Armfield’s debut novel Our Wives Under the Sea (Picador 2022) is one of my favourite queer novels of 2022! Our Wives Under the Sea is a dual-perspective narrative that follows both Miri and her wife Leah. Miri’s chapters narrate Leah’s return from a deep-sea missionRead More