The movie’s concept seems like an unworkable, even bad idea, which is part of the point-Hanks stresses the notion that successful movies aren’t just a matter of story but the people who make them. The bleakest horror story can also be a love story Armfield deftly illustrates how.Ī fictional account of the agony and ecstasy of making a movie, from someone who’d know.įor his sprightly debut novel, actor/writer/national treasure Hanks-author of the story collection Uncommon Type, 2017-imagines the making of Knightshade: The Lathe of Firefall, a mashup of Marvel-esque superhero fare, war story, and artsy melodrama. Is Leah's current circumstance just further along the continuum of human understanding of loss and endurance? Launching her book with epigraphs from both Moby-Dick and Jaws, Armfield guides the reader through the liminal spaces in the couple’s lives and approaches them with an occasionally ironic humor. The unearthly circumstances of Leah’s underwater captivity and mutation are horrible enough but take on new meaning in relation to other, more understandable situations Miri has faced in her life: the metamorphosis her mother underwent during a fatal illness and the sometimes-irritating voices she hears constantly emanating from an unseen neighbor’s television. Structured like the ocean’s levels, deepening and darkening the further one descends, the novel slowly reveals that the horrific situation Leah tolerated may not have not been as accidental as it first seemed. When Leah returns home, things do not go as Miri had envisioned her unanticipated transformation-a terrifying dissolution of her human form into something unfamiliar and strange-challenges Miri’s assumptions about the course of their life together.

Miri’s narrative and excerpts from Leah’s diary of the mission relate their growing awareness-and grudging management-of the changes and relationship losses they both endure as a result of their prolonged separation. Then Leah, a marine scientist, embarks on a three-week submarine expedition during which things seem to go disastrously wrong, and she and her shipmates disappear for six months at the very bottom of the ocean. Leah and Miri lead a conventional married life of comfortable routine, shared love of movies, and happiness at having found each other. What happens to a marriage when one spouse is no longer the person you married?

Our wives under the sea book