"Our wives under the sea" by Julia Armfield

An audio book.

"Things can thrive in unimaginable conditions. All it needs is the right sort of skin"

There are 2 PoVs. One is Miri's who's worried when Leah, her wife, returns from a deep sea diving mission. It was meant to last weeks but it was months. She's changed. They no longer sleep together. She's spewing water and spends a lot of time in the bath. About halfway through the book her skin changes. We learn about Miri's past - her mother died of dementia (a type that Miri could inherit) in a hospice. Miri thinks that it's not good for the dying to see lots of wide open sky - it makes them think they'll just drift away. "Grief is like a haunting". While Leah was away she found an online forum for women who role-play being the wives of astronauts.

From Leah's PoV we learn about the mission - how Yelka, Matteo, and her were stuck for months deep on the ocean floor. Moon and deep sea missions aren't so different except that the ocean covers its tracks. There's no horizon that deep down. "The deep sea is a haunted house". We learn about her past - working in an acquarium with an octopus, having fantasies about being part of an all-female undersea research station crew. Yelka left the sub and died. Leah thought a giant creature was down there. Was it all an experiment run by the suspicious research organisation?

Miri goes to therapy. Leah is worse - her eye breaks and leaks like an egg; Miri covers her nose as if anticipating a smell. Leah returns Miri to the sea - no surprise, but more surprising is that she takes Leah to stay in her mother's house first.

Other reviews

• Aida Edemariam
• Zander Allport (the story masterfully captures a different kind of intimate grief: the feeling of separateness that continues between the two women even after Leah resurfaces. After an experience of transformation, Armfield suggests, reunion can feel as much like a loss as it does a regaining. Blending elements of horror, gothic, and realism ... the novel is sprinkled with unexplained, unnerving leakages )