It's not grief, one woman posted, it's more like a haunting. 

This specific quote feels like the right one to sum up the atmosphere of Our Wives Under the Sea, a book dealing with the complexity of grieving someone who is still there, but someone you are slowly losing. Remembering what was, comparing it to what is. All the while having to cope with uncertainty, dread, and the complete lack of answers as to how you got to this new and strange place.

Our Wives Under The Sea is told in alternating chapters between Miri and Leah. We follow Miri in the present as she deals with the aftermath of Leah’s return from a deep-sea mission gone horribly wrong. Being trapped in the darkness of the ocean for months has changed Leah, leaving Miri with the task of putting the pieces of their marriage back together. In Leah’s chapters, we experience what it was like for her in the submarine, the confusion about how and why things went wrong, the horror of their reality, and the unshakeable feeling that something is out there in the dark.

I love how Julia Armfield’s prose is filled with creative metaphors and imagery so specific that it makes perfect sense. Alongside these beautiful lines are very well-researched facts about the ocean and the creatures that inhabit it written in Leah’s voice and added so seamlessly to the story that it allows us to understand her fascination with the deep. The ocean is a big part of the story, so much so that the book is divided into five parts named after the layers of the ocean. Instead of following the more well-known stages of grief, the story uses the ocean as a narrative framework. Each layer is darker and colder than the previous one, the pressure increasing the deeper you go. Each layer reflects Leah’s physical state, Miri’s emotional state, and the state of their marriage as the story progresses.

Grief is selfish: we cry for ourselves without the person we have lost far more than we cry for the person-- but more than that, we cry because it helps. The grief process is also the coping process and if the grief is frozen by ambiguity, by the constant possibility of reversal, then so is the ability to cope. 

In an interview for Them magazine, Julia Armfield said, “I always knew that the book was going to be about grief, and anticipated grief to some degree, because Leah is not necessarily gone, but she’s going.” And Miri’s grief is a complicated one. Leah was missing for months, and upon her return, Miri finds that this Leah is drastically different from her Leah, the Leah we get to see in flashbacks from the time before. Miri can’t help but miss what she used to have with the person she knew and loved. This Leah feels like a shell of who she used to be, which is an understandable effect of the accident, but Miri is completely at a loss as to how must navigate this change.

 Can you fix her? Can you give her back again, but better? 

With Leah becoming increasingly withdrawn and with her transformation becoming more alarming, Miri carries the burden of fixing things. Which is difficult because she doesn’t have any useful information. Leah doesn’t talk about what happened, and Miri can’t reach anyone at the research center Leah worked for. “I’m interested in boring things and dailiness. I always have been. I like the way that dailyness communicates with horror, and that people who experience horror tend to cling to routine and cling to a sense of normality,” Armfield shared in an interview with AnOther Magazine. Caring for a deteriorating Leah while managing their home and trying to get assistance and answers from The Centre becomes Miri’s new normal. Caregiver burnout is so real, and you can feel how Miri is struggling to carry all of this on her own. The strangeness of it all forces Miri to deal with this in isolation, and coupled with a frustrating lack of answers, it is understandable how much Miri wishes things were different. 

When something bad is actually happening, it's easy to underreact, because a part of you is wired to assume it isn't real. When you stop underreacting, the horror is unique because it is, unfortunately, endless. 

Trapped in a malfunctioning vessel at the bottom of the ocean, Leah and the two other members of the research team find that sticking to some semblance of routine is the only way to cope. And the longer they remain underwater, the more these routines feel like the only things they can do.

The horror elements in Our Wives Under The Sea are quite subtle, focused more on the creeping fear of the unknown and the slow build-up of dread. And I loved every second of it. Leah and Miri are both stuck in situations where so much is out of their control, there’s nothing they can do besides carry on despite the uncertainty. 

And through it all, Miri and Leah’s love for each other is the one thing that remains clear. This love is what they both cling to in their most difficult moments. And this makes the ending even more devastating, even as you understand that it was an act of love. 

My favorite kind of stories are those that allow me to dive into another world and come out changed. Our Wives Under The Sea is certainly that, and this is definitely a reading experience I will carry with me for a long time.