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Leah has just returned from a deep-sea expedition gone wrong. Miri, her wife, is trying to cope with the grief of Leah's return - her partner has been irreversibly changed by her experiences. This book is beautifully strange, touching lightly on horror and the grotesque as Leah experiences a physical and emotional metamorphosis, and the prose is powerful in its expression of love and grief.
Winner of the Polari Prize 2023
‘A gothic fairy tale, sublime in its creepiness’ – Florence Welch
Our Wives Under The Sea is the haunting novel from Julia Armfiled, the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep, deep sea.
Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. But It soon becomes clear that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home.
Memories of what they had before – the jokes they shared, the films they watched, all the small things that made Leah hers – only remind Miri of what she stands to lose. Living in the same space but suddenly separate, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had might be gone.
Shortlisted for the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize
'A wonderful novel, deeply romantic and fabulously strange' – Sarah Waters, author of Ghost Wall
'Part bruisingly tender love story, part nerve-clanging submarine thriller' – The Times
