When writing in the voice of Miri, author Armfield is at her best, and her insights into the grieving process sometimes stop you in your tracks. Her friend Carmen attempts to commiserate, but Miri reflects, “Too often I find myself stoppered by unwillingness to admit to basic frustrations to look at her across a coffee shop table and respond to her humdrum admissions with a straight me too.” When speaking with friends, she keeps the severity of Leah’s condition largely to herself. She spends hours on hold to a helpline that never picks up. When you stop underreacting, the horror is unique because it is, unfortunately, endless.”

“It’s easy to underreact, because a part of you is wired to assume it isn’t real. So, Miri finds herself going over scenes from the past with the Leah she once loved, at one point observing: The couple’s therapy sessions are unhelpful and inconclusive. Although she tries to cope, she never asks Leah why she is drawn to sitting endlessly in the tub as the water grows cold. As Miri serves her glasses of saltwater, eventually the only thing Leah will digest, she struggles with the dawning realization that her wife has become a stranger.īut just as with her own mother, who died of dementia, Miri becomes an unwitting enabler, almost an accomplice to Leah’s demise. Her wife, Miri, wonders if she’s suffering from “a resurfacing glitch” or decompression sickness. She was trapped on a sub in dubious conditions for months longer than planned. By the time she comes home from the extended undersea mission, it’s clear Leah has been irreparably changed. The story unfolds in alternating narratives - through Leah’s account of a catastrophic submarine mission, and her wife’s account of their struggle upon Leah’s return. Julia Armfield’s debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea, is an exploration of this kind of loss, but it’s told through the lens of romantic horror. Those who lose loved ones to a gradual and progressive mental disorder endure a distinctive grieving process.

Our wives under the sea plot