DNF at about 20%

Having paid some attention to the true crime story seemingly at the heart of this book, I was interested in reading more. Not only about that story, but about the odd characters that spend their time working on amateur submarines. Unfortunately, I found this book so bloated with extraneous details and unrelated asides that it wasn't worth pushing through. It felt, if I'm being honest, that the the book could have been a long form article, but to justify a book it was stuffed with colorful extras tangentially related to the core premise.

* Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review. *

Kim Wall's tragic murder became a news story that captivated the world.

As details came out, everyone learned that the amateur submarine inventor took her life, and it cast light on an obsessive corner of the world.

Mathew Gavin Frank takes the reader deeper into that world as a way of examining Wall's quest to tell this story and how it led to her death.

Frank's writing is almost lyrical, transfixing the reader as he explains the submarine subculture.

I really enjoyed this unique approach to tackling a true crime book without falling into cliched storytelling.

I'm a lover of nonfiction and was very interested by the title, and cover of this book. But, I found myself struggling to get through it. I found the writing to be a bit dull and I had a hard time keeping my attention focused. At times I felt bogged down with with lots of details.

Some interesting stories regarding the crime and the community but overall, it wasn't a good fit for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the gifted e-ARC of this book.

Update June 2: New release review post on TikTok
Disturbing, poetic, mesmerizing, and revealing–more than a story of murder, this is a journey into the heart of darkness.

The talented and accomplished journalist Kim Wall disappeared while interviewing an eccentric man aboard his homemade personal submarine. 

Combining true crime and a kaleidoscopic vision of the drives and physical and psychological effects connected to diving in submersibles–particularly among the relatively small number of enthusiasts who spend time at depth in personal submarines–Frank delivers a book that's harrowing, beautiful, and transformative.

This unusual book held me transfixed. It's extraordinary at the level of language. Frank layers history, obsessions, biology, technology, terrors, inhumanity, and perception into a remarkable work. His willingness to push his own limits, expose his vulnerabilities, and treat his subjects with compassion–or more visceral reactions–is inspiring. 

He explores the white-male-dominated subculture of personal submarine enthusiasts and related topics as he traces factors that led to murder. His direct approach to misogyny is refreshing.Submersed stands out as one of the most original and magical nonfiction works I've read in a long time.

Thank you, Pantheon, for the eARC for consideration. These opinions are solely my own.

This subtitle is doing a lot, but unfortunately it doesn’t deliver. The dots are not connected. I did not come away believing that amateur submarine builders are murderous.

Publication date June 3, 2025. Thank you to Pantheon and NetGalley for the gifted galley.

This is a true story about a journalist, Kim Wall, who was murdered by a DIY submarine builders in 2017. In investigating this story, Frank tries to connect this one grisly murder to the toxic subculture of amateur submarine builders. And although, yes, this niche community is made up of a lot of terribly misogynistic and hateful men (some of this book was very hard to read for this reason) this can also be said of the military or any other male dominated field, proving his thesis to not hold up.

I think this book could’ve been a lot more successful had he just focused on this community and the history of those obsessed with the feeling of sinking and feeling trapped. Where he lost me was with using Kim Wall’s death to paint a bigger and flashier picture.

There are a lot of fascinating rabbit holes that Frank leads us down, but overall these rabbit holes are used as filler and a distraction from the fact that there’s no real connection here. His writing style also bothered me: not investigative but unabashedly opinionated with a sometimes lyrical prose that felt jarring and a bit cringe-y.

This one is for all of you true crime fans out there. I think (I'll explain).  I am not always a true crime reader, Submersed had me, though.

    Thanks to Pantheon Books for sending me a copy to read.  I was very intrigued to read about the murder of journalist Kim Wall by submarine inventor Peter Madsen. This is what pulled me in. However, Matthew Gavin Frank gave us a lot more to digest. I love how it was done, too. He humanized it, and it wasn't just like reading a news report. He put himself out there and into this book, and we got to ride along with him into this crazy world of home built submarine enthusiasts. 

    This world of obsession with getting deep below our surface and building these subs was eye-opening, and I'm just going to say bonkers and ...well, yeah. I had that slow blinking head shaking meme going through my mind a lot. You all know the one. Several whaaaat moments for me in this one. 

     So the reason I say I think its for true crime fans is because yes, it is about that, but it is about so much more and opens the lid on an entire sub-culture (this was not an intended joke, but there you have it). 

    Most importantly, this is in all seriousness, a book about the loss of a bright human doing their job, and a family searching for answers, and also a reminder of how journalists put their life on the line to cover stories.

Submerged explores the unique obsession of amateur submarine engineers in the present day while laying out details of how the draw to explore the vast ocean depths has evolved over the years. The story is filtered through the lens of the author's speculations and assumptions. From religious connections and Nordic god influences.

Overall, I found most of them to be loosely connected. The pattern I picked up on was this misogynist, obsessive white man cult that was created for these middle aged men (and older) who found themselves bored with their lives or the average "hobby". And creating these Personal Subs not only allowed them create this exclusive club among them but also gave them this mostly untapped power to be able to travel in this space that so few have ventured.

There's this notion that the author brings up on how underwater became like this space separated from land. With its own laws and rules; which is to say it didn't hold the restrictions or boundaries that being on land held. The only train of thought I felt I really agreed with was the physical effects of being underwater for long periods of time and at certain depths. And how that affected a person's body. It's a known fact that just like with space travel, the lack of gravity causes severe damage to astronauts even on short trips to space.

And a book I've read, Our Wives Under The Sea, takes those effects and makes them a reality for a fictional scientist who was trapped in a submarine ship for months underwater.

As men are the most dangerous, unpredictable and deceitful predators on land, it was not surprising that the personal submarine creators would be eccentric, weird, off putting or harbor secret fetishes. And as the author is also a man, I found him trying to use details from interviews from other Psubbers and enthusiasts to construct a psychological profile that may explain their quirks and behaviors to be feeble and disappointing.

The more I got into the book, the more I understood that the writer was searching for the connection to this obsession with submarines and the ocean. And why was it that these guys got out of it. I did not, however, feel there was a real connection to Peter Madsen and his murder of Kim Wall. The relevance just wasn't there for me; I felt like I was lured into the book for that crime as if throughout his investigation and research he would make some revelation that hasn't been seen before.

Instead, Kim Wall's death is simply a gimmick to lure in potential true crime story readers.

Anti-Story About the Author’s Mental Troubles… and a Bit About Submarines
Matthew Gavin Frank, Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines (New York: Pantheon Books, June 3, 2025). Hardcover: $28. 320pp. ISBN: 978-0-593700-95-2.
*
“…Into the world of deep-sea divers, the obsession and madness that oceans inspire in us, and the story of submarine inventor Peter Madsen’s murder of journalist Kim Wall—a captivating blend of literary prose, science writing, and true crime… Begins with an investigation into the beguiling subculture of DIY submersible obsessives: men and women—but mostly men—who are so compelled to sink into the deep sea that they become amateur backyard submarine-builders. Should they succeed in fashioning a craft in their garage or driveway and set sail, they do so at great personal risk—as the 2023 fatal implosion of Stockton Rush’s much more highly funded submarine, Titan, proved to the world. Matthew Gavin Frank explores the origins of the human compulsion to sink to depth, from the diving bells of Aristotle and Alexander the Great to the Confederate H. L. Hunley, which became the first submersible to sink an enemy warship before itself being sunk during the Civil War.” If this book just described this history, it would be what I had been hoping to find in it. But as the mutilated or twisted cover image suggests, this text instead spends most of its contents on exploring the madness of its author. “Frank finds himself reckoning with obsession’s darkest extremes.” It explores the “physical and mental side effects of sinking to great depth,” as “Frank attempts to get to the bottom of this niche compulsion to chase the extreme in our planet’s bodies of water and in our own bodies” by driving himself mad. “What he comes to discover, and interrogate, are the odd and unexpected overlaps between the unquenchable human desire to descend into deep water, and a penchant for unspeakable violence.”
Frank is “a professor of creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts Program at Northern Michigan University”. This suggests that this is going to be a creative, as opposed to a historic or non-fiction project. The chapters are numbered without headings, so this book is a bit difficult to navigate. Calling the chapters by periods, or inventors covered would seem to have been more logical, unless the narrative is too disjointed for such simply classifications.
As the frontmatter predicted, the “Prologue” begins with Frank’s personal fear “of the ocean”. He lays other mental illnesses on top of this, including accusing his predecessors of being “OCD”.
In the next section, he begins by reminding readers of the dramatic murder of a journalist by an “amateur submersible builder”. But then Frank complains that he did not “want to write about the murder of Kim…” but rather about the “obsessions” of these “DIY… enthusiasts” to explain through them the “human condition” of “longing”.
Chapter 1 begins in Copenhagen by noting that “eccentric engineers” have “found” here ‘components” such as “shards of glass, conveyor belt ramps, oil cans…” What is this dude even talking about. This is just completely nonsensical.
I am out. There are too many books in my reading list for this set for me to spend any more time trying to figure out why Frank decided to hold a counseling session with a world of readers. I do not recommend this book to any reader, unless you have come this far, and want to look inside to figure out just how Frank managed to sell this thing to a publisher.
Pennsylvania Literary Journal: Spring 2025 issue: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-spring-2025

I had no idea that there was a subculture of submarine hobbyists, let alone what an icky boys club it is. (Although I'm not surprised. Cheers to the ONE woman who is a literal scientist.)

The writing is beautiful but at times a bit much. I wonder how many pages could be cut if some of the fluff was removed. For example, there's an entire speculative chapter on what Kim might have been feeling as she walked to Madsen's workshop, and another on the history of the hand wave. Also like, did he meet with Madsen in prison or turn around and go home? It was unclear.

Before the murder of journalist Kim Wall by inventor Peter Madsen hit international headlines, few had heard of the world of amateur submarines, a small but obsessive group chasing the chance to go ever deeper.

Like the author, I am very claustrophobic, and deeply suspicious of deep water, so of course the stories of spelunkers and divers fascinate me. And while I remember following the story of Kim Wall’s murder as it unfolded in the news, I didn’t follow it all the way until the end, and I know nothing about the wider community of submarine enthusiasts and how this story fit into it, so I was excited to dive in.

The author divides his attention between the crime and the community fairly evenly, showing how the problems that Madsen had with women and violence were intertwined with his enthusiasm for diving, where a man can command all he surveys and leave the strictures of society up on the surface. Frank’s uneasiness with his subject matter creates an interesting push and pull in his writing, especially as he’s not at all afraid to show exactly how out of his depth he is.

Though it’s a short book, Frank’s wide view means I feel that I learned a lot about many different aspects of the amateur submarine community, from the history to the social dynamics to possible issues with sexism. He also truly tries to get to know the story of Kim Wall, and his admiration of her as a person and a journalist shines through.

However, while the writing was lyrical, I did think it became a bit overwrought at times. There are some genuinely beautiful passages, sure. But he also attempts to emulate Kim Wall’s style of including vivid, off-kilter details to her reporting, but less successfully I thought, especially in long passages detailing the minutiae of locations or moments – it rather threw off the pacing of the read and left me out at sea. The case is the same with barely tangential passages about barely involved personages, which are maybe meant to add color but just left me cold.

Please disregard the number of submarine puns in this review – I really couldn’t help myself!

Personal submersibles have become a widespread hobby among those who dream of traveling to space or the depths of the sea. But for Peter Madsen, it was his life and mission that veered into darker territory. Matthew Gavin Frank, with his eloquent reporting style, dives into the background of Pater Madsen, the personal submersible community, and the events that led to the murder of Kim Wall, a renowned journalist covering the deep diver's work. This book definitely isn't for someone without at least an interest in submarines, and it may not truly appeal to true-crime enthusiasts. Frank covers many facts and scenarios about deep sea diving and the hobbyists going after that high. While the writing is beautifully pieced together, it may not be approachable to the average reader. All in all, it is a good piece of nonfiction that does deserve its praise.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I think it was an interesting choice to combine true crime into a book about a hobby. Or is it the reverse? It felt like it should have been one or the other, and switching back and forth didn't help.

I really enjoyed the bits that were focused on women in this world, both as hobbyists and careers. The section on women in the navy just reminded me why I don't trust men... I appreciated the girl power vibe of those sections.

And while it's nice to see the more human side to the author, I felt his fear and anxiety really impacted the interview (which we'd been building up to the entire book) negatively. The opportunity seemed wasted, like maybe there was someone better for the job.

While an interesting read, I think both topics could be covered in separate books more thoroughly.

This was a really well done true crime nonfiction book, it had that feel that I was looking for from the description. Matthew Gavin Frank was able to weave a strong story and keep this respectful. It was researched well and was engaged with what was happening.