Recently in Literature: Learn how to flip shark tales into existential horror

“The Seas” by Samantha Hunt is considered one of my all-time favourite books. It tells the story of a lady who’s satisfied she is a mermaid, and her lover, who’s a veteran of the Iraq Battle. Spoiler alert: on the finish the woman turns right into a puddle of water, leaving each the readers and her lover in bewilderment. 

Since ending “The Seas,” I believed I’d by no means discover one other ebook that might match its stage of eccentricism. That modified after I came across Julia Armfield’s “Our Wives Beneath the Sea.”

Armfield’s debut novel facilities round a pair — Miri and Leah — as they navigate a relationship haunted by persistent psychological well being struggles. Leah, a marine biologist, has to endure months below the deep sea when considered one of her fieldwork missions goes awry. The narrative switches between the views of Leah, chronicling her journey within the sunken submarine, and Miri, who struggles to reconnect with Leah after she has resurfaced from her months-long entice below the ocean. 

Miri finds that the journey has turned her spouse into a wholly totally different particular person — or perhaps even one thing apart from human. Leah is now so anxiety-ridden that she spends most of her time at house in a crammed bathtub and ceaselessly drinks salty water, very similar to the fish she noticed on her horror story-like mission.

All through the ebook, Armfield explores the horror style by way of references to “Jaws,” retellings of ghost tales and eerie descriptive language that dives into physique horror. However it’s not the imagery of Leah’s bleeding gums that conveys a crippling sense of concern to the viewers. Slightly, it’s an existential horror that envelops each single web page of this quick novel. 

Past the depiction of shark tales and tense couple remedy classes, the sense of unease comes from the compelled realization that human power and information is sort of inconsequential.

Every chapter of the novel is titled after one other zone of the ocean. Readers go additional under the mighty waters with each flip of a web page, finally reaching zones that even mild has not reached. They find yourself in a darkish abyss, going through all that’s but unknown to man.

Just like the ocean, our consciousness and “sunken ideas,” as Miri calls them, should not totally understood. Readers quickly notice that, sure, we’re clueless concerning the anatomy of cosmic jellyfish, but in addition about God, relationships, love and the way we’re speculated to take care of all of the unknown. 

Armfield makes use of Leah’s trancelike descriptions of the deep sea to induce extra anxiousness within the reader. Lengthy a marine biology nerd, Leah is totally mesmerized by the variations of deep sea creatures that enable them to resist situations no human might think about. Finally, this turns into one other reminder of people’ powerlessness in opposition to the pure world.

“I used to suppose it was very important to know issues, to really feel protected within the studying and recounting of information. I used to suppose it was doable to know sufficient to flee from the panic of not understanding, however I realise now that you could by no means be taught sufficient to guard your self, not likely,” says Leah. her colleagues, she realizes that neither their engineering abilities nor religious religion is sufficient to save them. 

Her conclusion: “to know the ocean … is to recognise the enamel it retains half-hidden.”

Even Miri proves to be powerless in opposition to the mightiest third character of the novel, the ocean. Ultimately, her efforts to search out out what occurred to her lover are insufficient. The thought of her spouse turns into simply one other sunken thought, too mysterious to unpeel.

In center college, I wrote a brief story a few child who hit his head on some rocks close to the seashore. His physique was devoured by big waves and for years after his dying, the townspeople cursed the ocean for taking him. 

I wasn’t making an attempt to make a metaphor on the inadequacy of human information in opposition to nature or convey an existential dread, and my literature trainer was fairly disenchanted by the darkish story. However having learn “Our Wives Beneath the Sea,” I notice how nice a medium the ocean was to convey a joint battle all of us face upon the conclusion of our limits. 

We, too, are product of largely water. It’s maybe hardest to simply accept that we’re most clueless with regards to the character of our very personal being.

Editor’s Notice: This text is a evaluate and contains subjective ideas, opinions and critiques.