Our Wives Under the Sea

It seems to me that I type the words 'this isn't my usual thing at all, but I loved it' on a regular basis. So regular, in fact, that you might secretly think that I'm in denial about what my usual thing actually is.

But for me the story concept trumps all else. I'll happily try genres I traditionally hate if the summary makes a good case for it. And this one did. 

Our Wives Under the Sea [Julia Armfield] is literary. It's also about the sea - the clue being in the title - which isn't a subject I find particularly interesting. But the summary did its job, offering a queer love story filled with subtle horror and a Lovecraftian undercurrent. I sat up and took notice. 

It's about a lesbian couple, Miri and Leah. They are British millennials - cosmopolitan, married, and relatively settled in life. Miri writes grant proposals and Leah is a marine scientist, who vanishes on submarine missions for weeks at a time.

But then Leah vanishes for a long, long time. What should have been three weeks in the deepest part of the ocean stretches to six months with only intermittent, vaguely reassuring messages from the mysterious research facility running things. At length, the facility announces that Leah has returned safely. 

The narrative is split between the two women, but is largely from Miri's anxious perspective. She bounces between the early days of the relationship, the helpless experience of Leah being missing, and her new existence. She has her wife back, only it's not her wife. 

I thought that the story would be a little more psychologically ambiguous. It could have played with Capgras syndrome and have Leah actually be fine, if traumatised. You can see ghosts in some sections where that might originally have been planned. 

Miri is a hypochondriac who has recently lost her mother to degenerative illness. While Leah is missing, Miri cuts herself off from her well-meaning friends and once Leah returns the situation is so strange that she cannot risk their involvement at all. A fantastic section sees a desperate Miri stumbling across a Mumsnet-style forum in which women role-play as wives to missing astronauts. It's full of the usual internet squabbles and reddit shorthand - EB (earthbound), MTM (mission to Mars), and MHIS (my husband in space, inspiration for the book's title.) There is one other term the roleplayers use - CBD. Came back different. 

Leah definitely, unambiguously CBD. Leah barely speaks. Leah runs the taps constantly. She has a nosebleed every morning at 6am and seems to be shedding her skin. She drinks only salt water and doesn't eat at all. This isn't in Miri's head, and she has every right to be panicking - there's just nowhere to turn. The research facility is hard to reach (every day begins with a very British experience of Miri being on hold to either the facility or the NHS). The facility reluctantly arranges for some gaslighting couple therapy sessions, and then one day their website is gone and the phone numbers stop working. 

Throughout all this, we slowly learn what actually happened on the submarine. Leah's sections are in diary form, and is an account of the submarine mission as it goes very wrong. These are relatively short and refreshing sections - some actual facts sprinkled in between Miri's anxious fears. 

They are also are some of the most frightening scenes. There are only three people on the crew, and it's a tiny submarine. When the power vanishes, they start sinking. The sinking lasts for hours and they know that eventually they will reach a point where the submarine is simply ripped apart by pressure. It's the stuff of nightmares. 

Throughout this, we get plenty of chance to get to know the real Leah. She is brilliant, brave, and full of love - both for the world and for her wife. It's plainly obvious that the Leah in the submarine and the Leah currently sitting in Miri's flat, running taps 24/7 and drinking salt-water, are not the same person.

The biggest criticism that I've seen levelled at this book is that it doesn't give any answers. I can understand that, as someone who usually feels cheated by ambiguous endings. But in this case, not knowing worked so much better for me. This book was a love letter to the true mystery and horror of the ocean, and to have someone dissect and explain at the end would have cheapened that. 

The core of this book is a fairly ordinary love story. Two women who met at a dinner party and have an awkward encounter because one is sat on the other's coat, and who then build a life together. The giggle through other people's chaotic weddings and then get married in candlelight because the power has gone at the town hall. They have burgers afterwards. They watch 90s movies together and learn so much about each other's past that it feels like they actually experienced each other's memories. Their life is full of cups of tea, deciding where to go eat, and bickering about the neighbour's TV being too loud. It could have been a heterosexual love story with minimal changes, but it works so much better as a queer one.

Miri has to grieve her wife three times during the course of the book - when Leah goes missing, when she comes back different, and then at the end. For me, that was incredibly satisfying. 

Our Wives Under the Sea isn't my usual thing at all, but I loved it.