Julia Armfield

Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, 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.

To have the woman she loves back should mean a return to normal life, but Miri can feel Leah slipping from her grasp. 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.

"Our Wives Under The Sea" is the debut novel from 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.

Our Wives Under The Sea

lily lily 

I used to think there was such a thing as emptiness, that there were places in the world one could go and be alone. This, I think, is still true, but the error in my reasoning was to assume that alone was somewhere you could go, rather than somewhere you had to be left.

Revna

Kenny Chia

She is someone who eats the disappointing cake she has ordered for herself, someone who allows me to throw the conversation off its hinge.

Laura Dobie

To know the ocean is to recognise the teeth it keeps half hidden.

Sumaya Saripoa

Things continue. This is something I have always found: unfortunately, things go on.

Robyn Claridge

I want to explain her in a way that would make you love her, but the problem with this is that loving is something we all do alone and through different sets of eyes.

The deep sea is a haunted house: a place in which things that ought not to exist move about in the darkness.

prawnie

“What you have to understand, " she says, “is that things can thrive in unimaginable conditions. All they need is the right sort of skin. "

Most nights, though I don’t mention this to Leah, I dream in molars spat across the bedclothes, hold my hands beneath my chin to catch the teeth that drop like water from the lip of a tap.

..I seemed so endlessly clenched and tense and prone to discomfort where Leah was simply happy to sit as she was. The reason you get heartburn, she used to say, is because you’re letting your whole body squeeze you too tight.

Our Wives Under The Sea quotes

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