Chapter 40: Miri — Summary, Analysis, and Key Themes

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens with Miri imagining a meeting between her mother and Leah—a meeting that never happened. In this fantasy, her mother is well (or Miri has taken better care of her), and the two women get along so well they develop private jokes that exclude Miri. Leah tells her mother that the ocean makes up a far greater percentage of the world than land, and her mother playfully calls the remark pretentious, which makes Leah laugh.

Miri and Juna drive to Miri's mother's house by the sea in the early morning, arriving through mist. Miri hasn't visited in years; she gutted the house of its furniture and photographs but never sold it. Inside, she pulls dust sheets from the sofas and briefly senses her mother's presence, though the chair is empty. They bring Leah inside and place her in a saltwater bath in the mother's bathroom, where Miri unwraps her from towels and notices the bandage slipping to reveal the dark space where her eye should be. Leah's face is weeping sideways in the water, becoming less flesh and more liquid.

Juna brings supplies from a petrol station and, sitting with Miri in the corridor, tells her what she knows. When the craft surfaced, only Leah and one other crew member were aboard. Juna's sister Jelka died during the dive; the Centre informed her by letter that the body had been expelled from the craft while submerged, as regulation required. Juna went to the Centre despite being discouraged, and after an altercation with staff, a man in a sports coat gave her Jelka's effects and a personal number that later proved disconnected. Juna also mentions the strange phone calls she received during the dive's long absence—calls she sometimes believed were warnings from someone at the Centre.

Juna reflects on loss, describing it as the absence of afterward—the endlessness of losing someone while everyone else moves on. She mentions reading that living means relinquishing the dead and letting them go in the water.

Miri lists memories of Leah she didn't have space for: playing a song by Heart and miming the lyrics, Leah's hands and yellow hair, her kindness, the way she made Miri laugh. She wakes beside the bath the next morning and decides to take Leah down to the water. Juna gives her a moleskin coat containing pages Leah wrote—found among Jelka's effects.

Miri carries Leah down the smuggler's path—a narrow track cut into the cliffside, past caves where smugglers once stored rum and brandy. She wades into the sea, holding Leah as the towels fall away and Leah's body begins to dissolve—her chest frilling, growing translucent, then clear. Miri releases her, and Leah melts into the water. The chapter ends with Miri alone between air and water, one foot straining for the sand.

Key Events

• Miri and Juna drive to Miri's mother's house by the sea with Leah's body

• Miri places Leah in a saltwater bath in her mother's bathroom

• Juna reveals that only Leah and one other crew member returned aboard the craft

• Juna recounts Jelka's death and the Centre's handling of her effects

• Juna gives Miri the coat containing Leah's written pages

• Miri carries Leah down the smuggler's path to the beach

• Miri wades into the sea and releases Leah, whose body dissolves into the water

Character Development

• Miri: moves from holding on to letting go; the act of release is both an ending and a transformation. Her grief shifts from denial to acceptance as she physically carries Leah to the water.

• Juna: reveals her own grief journey, shares Jelka's story, and becomes a companion in grief. Her reflection on the absence of afterward deepens the novel's meditation on loss.

• Leah: mostly passive, dissolving; her body's transformation mirrors the sea's power and the novel's central mystery.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

• Grief and loss / letting go: Juna's reflection on the absence of afterward; Miri's release of Leah.

• The sea as transformative: the alchemist sea changing something into something else.

• Ocean as majority of the world: Leah's recurring point about the ocean's dominance.

• Centre's cover-up: the disconnected number, the sports coat man, the institutional opacity.

• Memory and nostalgia: Miri's list of memories, the mother's house.

• Homecoming: Miri's return to the house by the sea.

• Dissolution into water: Leah's body melting into the sea.

• Sea lung: referenced as Miri thinks of the transformation.

Why This Chapter Matters

This is the emotional climax of the novel—the moment Miri finally lets Leah go. It also provides crucial information about the Centre's handling of the dive and the fate of the crew.

Study Questions and Answers

1. Why does Miri bring Leah to her mother's house by the sea?

The house represents home and memory. Miri hasn't visited in years, but the sea setting and the mother's absence create a space where she can confront her grief. The saltwater bath echoes Leah's underwater origins, and the house becomes a threshold between land and sea.

1. What does Juna's account of the Centre reveal?

Juna's story exposes the Centre's evasiveness: the letter about Jelka's death, the discouragement from visiting, the altercation, and the disconnected number. It suggests a cover-up or at least a profound lack of transparency about the dive's true nature.

1. How does the act of releasing Leah function?

The release is both an ending and a transformation. Leah's body dissolves into the sea, fulfilling the novel's recurring motif of the ocean as a transformative force. Miri's final position—between air and water—captures her liminal state as she begins to move forward.

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