"Our Wives Under The Sea" Discuss Everything *Spoilers*

[SFFBC, Ancillary Mod]

A few questions to get us started:


1. What did you think of the world?
2. What did you think of the characters?
3. What worked or didn't for you?
4. Overall thoughts?

[Shawnie]

I listened to this today and really enjoyed it. I loved her writing and the flow of storytelling, a little meandering but not overmuch because of the shorter length. I liked the submarine setting. I wanted just a bit more sea creature monster at the end. :)

[Netanella]

I've this book twice now, the second time to make sure that I read it right the first time on the reveal at the end. I ended up loving this book, even with its excessively beautiful language. "Lesbian melancholia" is the new sub-genre with this author, I believe.

[CJ]

Well, I wasn't very impressed with this. The ebook edition from my library has a blurb saying "Deeply romantic and fabulously strange" and it just wasn't any of that for me. The horror stuff is pretty pedestrian and what's so romantic about accepting a relationship is over?

I get the impression the author was trying to pull off something like This is How You Lose the Time War with its dual authorship but as a single author, with how she wrote Miri and Leah stylistically different, but didn't have the chops to pull it off convincingly. A lot of this book's failings for me reminded me of the problems with Our Hideous Progeny, with that author trying to bring too many things into the mix and not really doing any of them well, from the relationships stuff, the queer stuff, the horror stuff, the narrative style. It just feels the author wanted to clever but ended up exposing her lack of experience as a writer.

I think there was a good idea at the base of this novel, with the merging of a subtle horror story with the process of recognizing and accepting a romantic relationship has ended. I'm just not impressed with the author's skills and talent and don't think she pulled it off very well, especially with juggling the two differing perspectives of Miri and Leah, where it felt the author understood Miri much more than she did Leah. I don't like it when as a reader I find myself working to compensate for the author's shortcomings in order to make sense of their story, which I did a lot with this novel, especially with the ending.

One last thing: a thing that irked me immensely was how Miri basically sloughs off Leah at the end. I get that we can read that as an analogy of freeing yourself from a dead relationship, but it felt like the author was taking a cheap, convenient route to me, with how Leah was in a state where she wasn't able to consent to Miri's choices nor did Miri really make any effort to communicate with Leah at that point, and was just doing things to Leah and her body. It was weird and very one-sided and I really didn't like it.

[Melanie, the neutral party]

I'm having a hard time staying with this one. (view spoiler)[It's a bit depressing and there's not really anything science fictional going on to keep my attention... (hide spoiler)] @ 60%

[Kinematic]

I felt that the book was really boring on the first read through. I feel like a second read through would be significantly better but only because I would be a bit more tuned to how Leah was changing. The Miri chapters were just poorly written. They were filled with so many descriptors, mini stories and odd facts that didn't really seem to serve the main story at all. It felt like too much filler and much could be cut without changing the story at all.

If the length of the Miri chapters and the Leah chapters were switched, the book might have been much better.

[Chris]

I am sad to say that my frustration with this book is typical of my reactions to much recent literary fiction. The plot, which could have been good, was neglected. Instead of detailed scenes with action and dialogue, the narrators usually summarized what happened. Too much time was spent inside the main characters' heads, and Miri was especially annoying with her depressed ruminations. Jumping around in time seemed pointless.

[a.g.e. montagner]

The person I know best has read this book last February, and she had the same kind of criticism expressed here. Conversely, she won't stop raving about La nostra parte di notte.

I'd like to speak in favour of literary fiction, though: plenty of it is successful. The problem seems to be often with speculative fiction that tries to be literary; or the opposite, which is perhaps the case with Orbital.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

I also thought it was meandering, but by the end, I liked it after awhile. Literary novels often fall short in the area of entertainment expectations it seems to me. Many go deep mostly on trying to get at expressing feelings about The Human Condition or the author is most interested in the ‘art’ of writing, or in using layered literary pyrotechnics and clever symbols hoping to impress award committees, not just readers. I admit I was hoping for more monster and was not expecting this book-length essay about grief and the growing distance between people in a relationship.

[Cynda]

The horror and the literary nature of the novel contribute to the deepening of the reader's understanding of the idealism, mismanagement, and even misdirection in this story. How often science takes the lives of those being studied/those studying.

[Cynda]

These wives are not perfect humans as none are, Yet there were barriers too great to bridge. Although Miri might have tried harder to communicate and hoped Leah would communicate herself, ultimately two people being divided by this speciation could not communicate as the two humans they had been before. This makes the ending so necessary and loving as possible.

[Chris]

aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: "Literary novels often fall short in the area of entertainment expectations it seems to me. Many go deep mostly on trying to get at expressing feelings about The Human Condition or the author is most interested in the ‘art’ of writing, or in using layered literary pyrotechnics and clever symbols hoping to impress award committees, not just readers."

I think it's possible to walk and to chew gum at the same time. The best literary fiction is both entertaining and deep. I think you're right about award committees. Neal Stephenson had an enlightening answer to a question about literary vs. genre fiction: https://interviews.slashdot.org/story...

[Olga]

Just finished the story and enjoyed it a lot.
For some reason it resonated with me and I'm totally satisfied with the way it turned out.
No clear answers in I Who Never Known Men drew me nuts. No clear answers here feel so damn right. Strange.
This is a book I didn't know I needed. Badly. After reading it, for some time I felt kind of in a changed state of consciousness and had to find an anchor to get back to reality, but I'm not fully back yet.
I did have questions about Miri's behavoiur at first - why not take Leah to hospital? Why not go to the Centre and demand answers fro them instead of just calling and spending hours on hold? Things like that. But then something changed. I still have those questions, but they seem inconsequential.

And I absolutely loved the writing! It's been a long time since I highlighted so many sentences just because they felt beautiful. They made me feel warm and cozy inside a thousand times more than all the jam in The Spellshop.

I also learned that I need to trust SFFBC collective consciousness more. I would have never picked this book if it wasn't BOTM. I was even going to skip January altogether, because both books are horror, but now I'm thinking on giving Our Share of Night a try too.

Thank you, Ines!

[Melanie]

I think this book is beautiful. I love the writing, it's like poetry. I couldn't connect with Miri as much as I wanted to, and I found Leah's chapters were better. However, I do love Miri!

One of the problems I had with this book is that it could do with being a bit longer, maybe. But maybe we're meant to assume some things and some things are left out on purpose to create more of an air of mystery.

The other thing I wanted to say about Our Wives Under the Sea was that there wasn't enough answers or information about the sci-fi aspect to it. I think too much more on that would spoil the book, but I just need a bit more information about (view spoiler)[what happened to them, and what was lurking down there. (hide spoiler)]

I'm really glad I read this though, and at the moment it's the best book I've read this year!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I wanna hear folks' thoughts on the ending and what your takeaway was

[Melanie, the neutral party]

I didn't like it. It broke my suspension of disbelief because people will want to know what happened to her. Like it might read that Miri murdered Leah. Body just disappears.

**disclaimer: I wasn't enjoying the story before the end and the dislikes may be correlative.

[Sarah, The Unsettled]

It has been awhile since I read this, but I thought she turned into a fish (merwoman?) and swam into the sea. The ending was what saved the book for me.

I interpreted it as a metaphor for how releasing grief can be freeing?

But I totally get why people are saying they didn’t like it, and agree the beginning is a painful slog.

[Tina Reads]

I'm going to re-read this since I loved it when it came out and I've been wanting to do a re-read for awhile. The lyrical prose just SENT me!

(view spoiler)[I've noticed that the author uses water (Private Rites uses water, too) for change and the shifting of family dynamics. In OWUtS, it's the dissolution of a marriage amidst troubling circumstances. (hide spoiler)]

[Melanie, the neutral party]

Sarah wrote: "I interpreted it as a metaphor for how releasing grief can be freeing?"


That actually helps me understand it and quite makes sense. Thank you.

[Melanie]

I liked it, but the speculative element was a bit too out-there. I think (view spoiler)[Leah just essentially dies, but as a reader you're meant to desperately want her to become a mermaid or a fish or something, anything! (hide spoiler)]

[Jen]

I really enjoyed this story, I liked being in their heads and not having any idea what was going on, but slowly realizing what must be happening. I keep thinking about the support group for fake astronaut wives and all their acronyms like CBW, came back wrong. Such a fun little aside and it added to the feeling of dread as the story was progressing.

[Cynda]

I agree Jen that the use of the mysteriousness of it all helps the reader to speculate, speculate.

[Tina Reads]

I really enjoyed this novel, more so in my reread. The prose is beautiful and the story flows like water. Part of me thinks that Leah never came back, and she was there as a hallucination that Miri has while she deals with the grief of losing her wife. It's essentially easier for her to imagine that her wife turns into water than deal with the sudden loss. The only thing that keeps me from fully believing this is the conversations with her friend, as Miri an unreliable narrator and we don't know if they happened like she said.

The chapters in the submersible were some of my favorites. I think it really highlights Leah's personality in the time before her "death". It really shows just how changed she was when she returned.

The thing that bothered me the most about this book was the lack of medical treatment, and the laissez faire attitude of the company following the return. I understand that it would be a different novel and lose the speculation about the ending, but dang, I was annoyed about it.

All in all, I kept it at a four star, and I will most likely read it again given the chance.

[Jess]

I read this book last year and really didn't like it. However, I loved her new book Private Rites that I read this month. I'm now tempted to reread to see if I get on with it better now that I understand the author's style.