Armfield executes it all in gorgeous prose that is as unnerving as it is often rather romantic. Luckily, this is the sort of genre-experimentation I truly crave and for me the lack of much actually happening only seemed to heighten the tension of what was going on underneath. It is less a horror novel and more an emotional interrogation set in a horror setting, blended to taste with a preference for the flavors of grief. While I found this novel to be incredibly provocative and enjoyable, I suspect it will appeal mostly to a niche audience.

‘ The deep sea is a haunted house, a place in which things that ought not to exist move about in the darkness.’ **For added review reading benefit, this Florence + the Machine song is a perfect pairing** Armfield manages to make Our Wives Under the Sea a novel in which you will find yourself both shivering and sobbing as it slowly pulls you under into its shadowy depths. ‘ The thing about losing someone isn’t the loss but the absence of afterward,’ Leah is told, and Armfield dives beneath the waves of loss to explore the void of absence and, at its heart, this novel is a moving meditation on grief and what it means to love a person. Most of the novel, however, recounts their relationship in contrast with the nearly-absent Leah of the present and the now-caregiver Miri who is at her wits end. On the surface this is a horror novel, rocking on the waves of perspectives between married couple Miri and Leah as they tell of Leah’s traumatic submarine accident that has left her slowly transforming from the person she once was in a series of ghastly and chilling scenes. Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is a quiet earthquake, slowly rearranging your emotions through ever-growing tension and terror while simultaneously being incredibly tender. And this is how I spent my vacation travel time with a slow-burn, haunting and heartbreaking work that examines loss within the framework of horror, something most would probably not recommend as relaxation reading but for me it was infectiously perfect. When Florence Welch recommends a book, I have to read it.

‘ To know the ocean, I have always felt, is to recognize the teeth it keeps half-hidden.’

Books like our wives under the sea