“My error was thinking that alone was somewhere you could go rather than somewhere you were left” 

Armfield’s ‘Our wives under the sea’ is a book about the complications of grief at its heart, with a large emphasis being placed on its alternating perspectives and timelines, switching between Leah stuck in a submarine that has lost power in the darkness of the ocean and Miri both living through the uncertainty of when Leah was missing, and trying to mend a relationship with a partner who is far from the person she was before she went missing, both emotionally and physically. 

The characters were each compelling and in many cases with dual perspectives I often find myself desiring to be in the mind of one when I am with the other, however in this case I really didn’t prefer one perspective more than I did the other. That being said the numerous perspectives and timelines did feel a little clumsy in places especially when switches were made to make some mundane remarks or list some facts which weren’t extremely necessary, it often took away from plot. The plot itself was also very simple, it is ambiguous in places and meant to be a bit unsettling and weird whilst rooted in the domestic. None of this I minded too much other than there was no major change as the plot progressed and I could guess, and accurately did, how it would end after about the first quarter of the book. 

I have also heard a lot of acclaim for Armfield’s prose however I didn’t find it anything remarkable in particular, overall the characters were really strong but the other elements were acceptable yet nothing mind-blowing.