Category: Book Review

Book Report: Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield

This is beautiful, in that it’s beautifully written.

In alternating first-person chapters, we follow a contemporary couple, Miri and Leah, who have undergone a catastrophe. Miri’s chapters are in the now, the aftermath, and Leah’s are in the when, the disaster itself. After crewing a deep-sea research vessel that became stranded in the Mariana trench for several months, she’s returned with severe nerve and tissue damage from prolonged compression.

But although Leah has made it back, their relationship has largely broken down. We see this only though Miri’s eyes, as all Leah’s chapters are in the past. The implicit question – every book should have at least one – is, will they sort out their differences? With a side order of, will Leah recover from her illness?

What this book has in spades is human observation, particularly in Miri’s chapters, as she tries to carry on normal life with her limited friend set and irritating neighbours. In many ways it’s the realness of these that pulls you along, that grounds you within the world. Our wives under the sea is, more than anything else, a mood piece, designed to walk you through a series of emotions.

It also manages that trick that Jules Verne failed, of giving you lots of marine information disguised as dialogue and documentaries. The colour of octopus blood. The proportion of Earth life in the sea. There are analogies to be had too; Miri joins a website for wives cosplaying that their husbands are lost in space. Later, more accepting of her situation, she joins a different one for people whose partners are really missing.

I picked this one up because I’m in the middle of querying, and it was mentioned by more than one agent that I’m interested in. It’s good to see where the bar is, although the genre here is wildly different. And I think my greatest impression is this; that this is a book that centre-stages its themes rather than either its characters or its plot. It’s a meditation on relationship breakdown and renewal, and of moving on.

From here on is spoilers; There is still time for you to surface before you encounter them.

And the spoiler is … that there is no spoiler! The book gently winds itself from here to there, and there is where you knew it was going anyway. Our Wives Under the Sea is billed as a horror, which takes away any surprise that you might experience when, at the halfway point, Leah’s bodily degeneration proves to be not just decompression sickness. Honestly that’s a relief, rather than a shock. There’s the obligatory amoral corporation of scientists too curious for their own good, and an ancient intelligence in the deeps that they should not have disturbed, but these are sketched lightly in the background.

I really like another character we’re introduced to right at the end, Juna, who’s sister died in the expedition. While Mira has been largely passive, Juna has been actively searching for answers. I find myself thinking about her a lot, and imagining what it would be like if Armfield wrote her story too. I’d be all over that.

Overall a contemplative, reflective book about changing relationships, disguised as a book about mild body horror.

Book report: Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde

Well now, there’s a title. I’m dyslexic, so I had to read it twice before I realised it didn’t have the word fifty in front of it. Now, it’s always kind of weird when a story riffs on a title from a different genre … so it was relief to discover that Jasper Fforde published this first. Almost a relief, because it also made me ask the awkward question, why didn’t I ever hear of this novel before? Because this is, no doubt, original. Original with a capital O, the kind that monks would have painted with deranged, frolicking hares.

At first, I thought, this is silly, the glorious silliness of, say, Hitchikers’. It has an Adamsian grasp of the absurd. And then, as the social value of the colours set in, I thought in rapid succession of the Paranoia ttrpg, and then of the their-rules-are-not-our-rules worldbuilding of Flatworld. This latter, if I’m honest, I haven’t read since I was a child, so the comparison may be tenuous.

And then, as the mistreatment of the greys became apparent, it dawned on me that what I was reading was the Handmaid’s Tale, as it would be if Atwood had decided to replace all real-world prejudices with allegorical ones. After then, finally, my brain gave up on comparisons and let me accept Shades of Grey as its own thing.

Enough of my impressions, let me tell you about the story! Fforde conjures up a slowly decaying, somewhat British world in which colours, and particularly colour perception, control the social order.  People can see no colours at all, or a mixture of the primary colours red, green and yellow. That this is unscientific – it’s neither the natural ranges of our retinal cones, nor the subtractive cyan, magenta, yellow if printing – is never explained, but serves to underline the unnaturalness of the situation.

Those poor souls born without any colour vision are the bottom of the pecking order, known as the greys, and form a downtrodden underclass living in something like indentured servitude. Our protagonist, a ‘red’ by the name of Eddie Russett, travels with his father to backwater town. Society here is less well-oiled, and coming to grips with it give him fresh eyes through which to see the wider problems. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s totally smitten with Jane, a local Grey; She’s kicking back at her lowly place in the order. Eddie is both a fish out of water and our guide to this world, which is an impressive balancing act.

There’s a crime to solve, a backplot to put together, and world building to marvel at. And a government conspiracy too. Yet, at the same time, that’s just scenery to show the lively characters against. Almost everyone in the cast is larger-than-life, easy to laugh at or with, and to enjoy even as you are aghast at their selfish motivations. Fforde’s talent is that he makes you believe in, and care about, fictional people who in lesser hands might be considered one dimensional.

Shades of Grey is undoubtedly funny. It is also well told, with the backstory very cleverly revealed in a steady drip of tiny details that your hindbrain unconsciously assembles while your I-love-this story brain is busying itself following the action.

If you’re in the market for some really different dystopian fiction, this could be just the dash of colour in an uncaring universe that you’re looking for.