I loved it too! Excellent debut, I’m so excited for what Julia Armfield does next.

I absolutely adored the woven timelines of Miri attempting to connect with Leah post-return, Miri grieving the declining health of her mother, and Leah slowly revealing what happened under the sea. I love a good slow burn where speculative elements (a bit of soft sci-fi, fabulism, etc) are used as rhetorical vehicles to expose the literary themes of the story. Idk why but I just love books that utilize that structure/genre.

Oh my gosh yes! I’ve said the exact same thing to my boyfriend recently. I think 3.4-3.6 range is especially relevant for contemporary lit fic. If it’s a challenging literary novel with anything remotely unusual about it (even if the concept is hooky) it will likely fall in this range. I tend to enjoy or even love the types of books that get rated 3.4-3.6, so it’s really helpful for me. And the word “pretentious” now piques my interest rather than dissuading me!

In the last year, most of the contemporary lit fic that I’ve rated 4-5 stars has fallen in this range. Ex: White Is For Witching by Oyeyemi, Grendel by Gardner, The Tiger’s Wife by Obreht, Sisters by Johnson, and the list goes on. IMO, all of them are much better than a 3.5, but I’ve read genuinely baffling reviews explaining why people didn’t like them.