We begin with Miri, who describes what it is like since her wife returned from a lost research dive in a submarine. We follow her experience as her wife, Leah, spends more and more time in the bath.
Whatever way you think the story might go from this brief initial introduction, it is unlikely that it will quite follow your imagined trajectory and this, combined with the wonderfully eerie descriptions of the world beneath the waves, makes Our Wives Under the Sea a very pleasing and absorbing read. The sea and its depths haunt Leah and the reader. What is really down there? Why has the research company she was working for gone to ground? What were they really looking for down there, and how ethical was their dive?
I should have published this review weeks ago when the novel was fresh, but it’s testament to the writing that I can still vividly see the last few scenes from both Miri and Leah’s perspectives. Like a mermaid’s wish in reverse, this novel questions how life crawled from the ocean and what it might be like to go back. It insistently presses the unknown down like the fathomless weight of the ocean squeezing the breath from your thoughts, the blood from your flesh. It’s a great read. It comes out on the 3rd of March 2022, so pre-order it now.
I’ll be reviewing When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo soon.