I don’t do horror. Watching it on tv means I’ll just be sitting on the couch with my face buried into a pillow for two hours, and reading it is too scary, too. (There’s one exception, of course.) However, I was recently given a copy of Julia Armfield’s novel Our Wives Under the Sea, which I was told belongs to the genre of queer horror, and I couldn’t put it down. Want to know why? Read on!
Our Wives Under the Sea is about a lesbian couple, Leah and Miri. Leah has just returned after a disastrous deep-sea mission had left her on the bottom of the ocean for several months. However, she has come back both physically and behaviourally altered, and Miri finds herself more and more unable to connect with her wife. Both women find themselves isolated, and the claustrophobic atmosphere becomes almost unbearable.
Even though I’m not an expert, I noticed all the tell-tale signs of a proper horror story: there’s a mysterious (dis)appearance, a fear of the unknown, some strange, inexplicable occurrences, and a hint of supernatural events. And then there’s the idea of being queer in a heteronormative world, which might cause a sense of isolation. All the ingredients are there, and it’s definitely scary.
And by scary I mean that I elusive feeling one gets when knowing something bad is about to happen but it isn’t quite there yet. In traditional Gothic stories, this called terror. It, this bad, creepy thing, is lurking somewhere in the shadows but you don’t know what it is or when it’ll finally present itself. At first, I didn’t know which of the two stories would be the most terrifying, Leah’s or Miri’s.
Both women are dealing with the unknown. Leah’s is the more obvious one, since she’s literally diving into unexplored territory, while Miri is dealing with a more relatable form: what happens when the person you love is no longer really there, and do shared memories still mean something? It’s symbolic that both characters (who tell their stories in a dual narrative) feel their lives are confined to a single space, Leah’s submarine and the apartment Miri becomes more and more reluctant to leave.
There are so many more elements in this novel that added to its eerie atmosphere: there are the upstairs neighbours, never seen but always heard since they never turn off their tv that can be heard through the ceiling, there’s the advert Miri sees about a community for people who have lost their wives under the sea, there’s The Centre, the mysterious company Leah’s working for and who fail to respond to Miri’s daily telephone calls, there’s Leah’s changing body which seems more and more to change into something aquatic, and there’s Jelka, one of Leah’s fellow researchers who starts hearing voices when they’ve been stuck in their submarine for a long time. Who are these neighbours? Why is there a community dedicated to wives under the sea? What is The Centre and why won’t they talk to Miri? What’s happening to Leah? What did Jelka do? Oh, I had so many questions.
While reading Our Wives Under the Sea, it felt like part of me was losing its way in the same way as Leah and Miri. With every unanswered question I was submerging myself deeper and deeper in the water, and while I really wanted to come up for air, I knew I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, until I knew exactly what had happened. I stayed up far too late reading, and I woke up much earlier than I should have. I became tired and started feeling haggard. Something was changing inside of me.
There’s a reason I don’t do horror. I get too involved and I become too scared. Whenever I read about monsters, I’m convinced they’re hiding under the bed, or waiting for me downstairs when I have to go to the bathroom, or staring at me through the window. Obviously, they want to turn me into one of them. Reading Our Wives Under the Sea made me feel like all these childhood fears were back, and I felt isolated and alone, and only Leah and Miri mattered to me anymore.
I slept less and less, and I felt myself changing. I was scared to look at my own reflection, I kept running my fingers over my body, making sure that I hadn’t suddenly grown gills. I kept touching my eyes to check they were still my own, and while eating, I made sure that I didn’t use too much salt, because that’s where things started to go wrong for Leah.
There was something fishy about this book, and I was afraid it would rub off on me. I’m still not sure it hasn’t.
What did you think of Our Wives Under the Sea? What do you think of horror stories? Have you ever been so frightened by a book that you stopped reading? What do you think lives on the bottom of the ocean? Please let me know in the comments! Also, don’t forget to follow me for more book-related posts!
