Julia Armfield

An exquisitely written set of stories largely drawing on magical realism and aspects of the uncanny to paint a picture of the lives of an assortment of women and girls.

I loved the weird and wonderful stories in this collection, particularly the raw teenage fandom of 'Stop Your Women's Ears with Wax', 'Formerly Feral' with its strange wolf-daughter, and the submerged title story, which provoked such dread, pity and unease in me that I'm not sure I'll ever forget it!

Armfield's way with words is singular yet accessible, and a lesson for other short story writers in using precisely the right words in as simple a way as possible to convey particular images and feelings.… (més)

I think it's always difficult to tell when you're reading something and struggling if your expectations are wrong, you're too dense, or if it's genuinely an issue with the writing, even if having an issue with the issue is subjective. I'm not sure if maybe I went into it expecting something too different to what I got. I feel like the underwater sections didn't really contribute much - they're a little weird and uncomfortable, but they feel like they're building to something and then in the end they're kind of... Not. And in fact it's emphasised that this isn't the sea, not exactly. It's not behaving like the sea. It's a whole book about the sea, we're treated to delightful sea facts, and then when there's a whole running narrative about being underwater she goes "well there doesn't seem to be anything living here so it's Wrong and Bad Sea". It feels kind of strange.

I guess it reads as a novel about grief and letting go which has a story about being stuck in a submarine interleaved. But even the grief felt strange because so little is dedicated to what happened before. There's a whole life they shared before the emotional devastation of the story and yet you barely get glimpses. And it's strange to have 2 first person perspectives when they come across as near identical people, even though they shouldn't.

I'm not sure how I feel about it overall, I guess. I feel like I was missing something all the way through. There were some emotional moments but the whole thing never really felt like it cohered. Maybe I'm just dumb idk… (més)