There’s no sense of momentum, here, nothing to make you want to keep reading. This is a very short novel, and yet it felt like such a drag to read. More than making the story forgettable, this lack of substance also makes Our Wives Under the Sea so hard to get through. (Luce’s review sums up my feelings perfectly.) The result is that the novel feels like a collection of disparate parts rather than a cohesive whole, a bunch of jumbled elements that never really coalesce into anything that feels like a proper narrative. You’re given descriptions and vague impressions and feelings and moments and snippets of memory, but none of this ever feels like it’s attached to anything solid, to any kind of substantial foundation. The biggest issue with this book is that its story doesn’t have any meat, nothing to really sink your teeth into. Our Wives Under the Sea was, for me, the kind of novel that you forget about the second you finish it–honestly, the kind of novel you forget about as you’re reading it. Julia Armfield’s debut, Salt Slow, is one of my favourite short story collections ever the inimitable SARAH WATERS blurbed this novel every author who I’ve seen talk about this novel online has given it nothing less than a stellar review–all signs pointed to my loving this. I really thought I would love this book it simply didn’t occur to me that I wouldn’t.
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