“When you stop underreacting, the horror is unique because it is, unfortunately, endless” – Julia Armfield, ‘Our Wives Under The Sea’
Hope you’re reading this on a beach, homie.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
Man, am I glad I didn’t try to rush through this book. For the record, it is short, and the chapters probably benefit from reading like 10-12 in one sitting. But again, I have a four-year-old on summer vacation. Free idea for hard-up profs out there: feels like you could put together a pretty good syllabus with this book, Aimee Bender’s The Butterfly Lampshade, and Chloe N. Clark’s Patterns of Orbit. There’s longing, there’s obsessive circling back to a single cataclysmic event, there’s the fear that comes with the thought of your beloved being far away, forever. I’m talking, obviously, about Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield.
What really moved me throughout my reading was how much this novel is about the importance of communication. The chapters alternate between Leah and Miri’s first-person perspective, and the whole time, you are confronted with the fact that these two people are telling a different story. Not like one of them is lying, but the profoundly different way they both experience one event—marine biologist Leah’s submarine sinking to the bottom of the ocean for months—drives a Mariana Trench between the two of them. The reveal of what happened/what will happen is wrenching and horrifying, but you cannot call this a horror novel. All the blurbs about “a love story like no other” and “haunting, evocative” are correct, but it feels disingenuous to call this a pure love story, too—even if I share the same idea of what love means as Leah and Miri, I think. The resulting mix of deep ocean facts, honest love, and terror is very much what my beloved Bob would call “Chris-core.”
Man, the ending of this book is perfect.
One last thing: NPR blurbs this book as “impressive and exciting.” Fuck you, NPR. Actually read the book and say something real about it if you’re gonna blurb it, Jesus. “Impressive and exciting” is what I said when my kid learned to climb the tall playground ladder. And even then I’m pretty sure I was more excited then NPR. God, imagining one of them saying that in their droll condescension. Our Wives Under The Sea is so much more than impressive and exciting. Even if it is both those things.
LINKS!
BEFORE WE DO ANYTHING ELSE LET’S WATCH SABRINA IONESCU HIT A BILLION THREES IN A ROW HOLY GOD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THIS GLUE YOUR EYEBALLS TO THE SCREEN
New The Line Break podcast, where Bob and I had a hell of a lot of fun being in the same room. I feel like I’ve been trying my whole life to make my work “hanging out with my friends,” because I’ve always thought it’s bullshit that people grow up and don’t hang out with their friends anymore. I’m grateful that my house is on Bob’s List of Chicago Stops when he visits, and I’m grateful to have this podcast where we can hang out even when we’re miles apart. I’m also grateful to get the chance to talk about Alina Pleskova and Hoa Nguyen poems while my cat menaces birds.
Delightfully tangled flash from Joshua Jones Lofflin in Vast. One of those stories where the form is really working—the whole time, I’m panicking, because this monstrous mess has to resolve somehow with the next 100 words or so. And the way it does! Go read.
I have not read any Hernan Diaz, but I enjoyed this interview. “If ever I find myself on the page, I view it as an immense failure” is a wonderful sentiment. One of my biggest pet peeves is seeing THE WRITER in the work, not in the postmodern, Vonnegut-in-Breakfast of Champions sense, but more like this vague sense that the writer is working some personal out on the page. Then again, I love when writers are in their bag, celebrating their passions. So maybe I’m not as hardline as Diaz. Still: good interview.
Old piece from Mental Floss, but it came across the Twitter TL, and I’m not gonna not put “15 Mysterious Facts About Yetis” in a Friday Links.
H/T to Matt Bell, aka , for tweeting about this Charles Finch essay right as I was thinking “hey, I should finish tomorrow’s column.” The essay is about plotting mystery novels, but the money quote for me is on the importance of preparation and ritual: “I start by writing a brief, extremely dull short story. No one will ever see one of these if I can conceivably prevent it; it’s usually only about three pages, but I refine it for weeks, as carefully as Rudy Giuliani mixing his old fashioned before he Skypes in to Hannity, because, like Rudy, I’m focused on doing a crime. Specifically, that small story contains a full, straightforward account of the case my detective must solve, told in simple English…in short, all the details I know I’ll have to omit from the real book I write, the actual mystery novel.”
Been on an Anderson .Paak kick lately. In whatever passes for liner notes on Apple Music, Anderson says he wasn’t sure André 3000 wouldn’t get around to recording his verse. Fair assumption for latter-day André, but it got me wondering: when you send a track to Three Stacks, do you get a guitar solo whether or not you asked for it? If yes, well—someone give André my contact info.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris