🌊 REVIEW 🌊

Private Rites by Julia Armfield
Published 11th June! Out now!!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

📝 - It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves and the cities have retreated to higher storeys. Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their estranged father dies. A famous architect revered for making the new world navigable, they find themselves uncertain of how to grieve his passing when everything around them seems to be ending anyway. As the sisters come together to clear the grand glass house that is the pinnacle of his legacy, they begin to sense that the magnetic influence of their father lives on through it.

💭 - I’ll start this by saying I haven’t read Our Wives Under the Sea yet (don’t come at me I’m sorry), so I went into this somewhat blind to the writing style/themes Armfield uses, apart from what I’d gathered from other reviews. This was definitely an eerie, tense novel, and I enjoyed the fact that, while there were some elements of horror, it wasn’t overpowering or unrealistic. I think each of the sisters were very well developed throughout, and their relationships, despite complexities, were relatable and well-thought out. Undebatably great writing, but did I understand everything that happened and its symbolism/meaning… no. Did I still really enjoy it? Yes!
(I also like that Armfield has such a connection with writing about water, as I saw her say in an interview, and thought the speculative setting was very well done too)

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Thank you to 4th Estate via NetGalley for the eARC of this novel.

She's done it again. Private Rites was one of my most anticipated reads of 2024, since both Our Wives and her short story collection Salt Slow both gained 5 stars from me. Armfield is an incredibly damp writer, and I mean that fairly literally - all of her writing is infused with this sense of permeability. Nothing is watertight in her sinister, barnacled world. This is as true of Private Rites as it is Our Wives Under the Sea. Private Rites imagines a not-so-distant future London which is filling up with water, the rain unrelenting and forcing people to move higher up, getting from place to place by water taxi. Despite this fairly enormous upheaval, little else has changed; people still go to work, still pay their rent, still squabble with their partners.

In this world, we meet the Carmichael sisters, Isla, Irene, and their younger half-sister, Agnes. After their father, an incredibly harsh patriarch and celebrated architect, passes away, the three sisters find themselves in each other's company after a long period of estrangement. The sisters aren't exactly likeable - infuriatingly antagonistic, self-involved and abrasive, particularly the older two, the Regan and Goneril of this light-touch queer King Lear. I'll confess I was worried about the Lear-yness of it, given that it's probably my least favourite Shakespeare and I've been known to zone out fully mid-production. This book is more about gesturing towards Lear than replicating it, however, and I did like how Armfield managed to replicate that eerie, post-collapse feeling that Lear has.

Armfield has described the apocalypse of this novel as a 'mundane' one, and whilst that certainly is the case - life is very much business as usual - Armfield remains a horror writer. Private Rites reads like one of those particularly insidious nightmares where the threat lurks in your peripheral business, but refuses to reveal itself. The kind of nightmare that sticks with you - the going about your business as things fall out of the sky in the distance. Alarms go off, but no one knows what they signify; houses slide down hills and collapse in a matter of days. Throughout the novel, you get that nightmarish feeling of frustration with the characters, like trying to flee a burning building but your legs refuse to move.

It feels disingenuous to call this novel dystopian in anyway - it feels so achingly plausible. Armfield cleverly, though perhaps a touch heavy-handedly at points, draws on our experiences of the pandemic to build her apocalypse - characters hunker down together, work from home with unreliable internet connections, arrange futile protests whilst the wealthy remain safe and warm. I think we'd all like to think we'd be a bit more proactive in a crisis like this, but Armfield's decision to draw on the pandemic in that way calls us out - no we wouldn't, we're extremely good at adapting to a new normal. It's a climate crisis novel, obviously, deriving its eeriness less from the crisis than the human inertia in the face of it.

The novel is of course, beautifully written, biting when it needs to be but retaining its soft underside, which it only shows in a few merciful glimpses. The characters are incredibly flawed, but hard to truly dislike. It is their jarring personalities, in fact, that throw their moments of tenderness into such sharp relief.

I imagine this one won't have as much broad appeal as Our Wives Under the Sea, but in my eyes it's Armfield's strongest offering yet.

Armfield’s characteristic use of water imagery seeped into every layer of the story and I loved the pervasive darkness and the slow building undertow of threat. The different perspectives and the voice of the city worked beautifully to layer explorations of grief, trauma, queer love and familial expectations. Raw, immersive and atmospheric, an absolute stunner that will stay with me for a long time.

I loved Our Wives Under the Sea by Armfield but I have come to the conclusion that she is definitely an author where the reader has to be in the right frame of mind.
Private Rites tells the story of three sisters in the aftermath of their father's death and how they deal with the grief they feel. I just felt a little too sad reading this and was not in the mood for a character driven novel with weird vibes. Maybe another time, I would have enjoyed it!

I think I'm settling at a 3.5 stars on this one. It was gorgeously written, just like Our Wives Under the Sea, and just like that previous book, water and queerness are prevalent themes. This is cli-fi rather than horror, although it does have a unique eeriness to it. The rain is constant - to the point that how humans live has had to alter drastically. Cults of varying degrees have sprung up here and there to essentially pray the rain away. And three sisters suffer the bereavement of their father - a man who enabled human society to continue in the current climate crisis with his architectural inventions. All of which sound promising but the outre elements are used mostly as window dressing for a story about a toxic man who enjoyed setting his daughters at odds with each other. This is King Lear with three queer daughters trying to find some balance after his death rearranges their universe. Armfield does interpersonal drama really well and I found the story engaging but it is quite low plot and the characters are all awful in their own way. All in all, I liked it but if you're looking for lots of substance rather than lots of style, this may not be for you.

Stories about womanhood, sisterhood and grief will always draw me in, and Armfield writes it in such a way that I couldn't stop reading.

My expectations for this were sky high, and I was (perhaps) expecting a little more from the "end of the world" aspect of this book, in saying that the last 20% of this had me unable to put the book down.

Despite the end of the world aspect going differently, it was also more real and raw than what I had imagined in my mind, and after a while reading it, the story was even more than I could have expected.

This may have been the first Julia Armfield novel I have read but it will not be the last. An absolutely spectacular novel. The writing drew me in such much it was luxurious in quality. Genuinely breath taking. One of the best books I have read for a long time.

Absolutely loved this. Julia Armfield is an amazing talent, she has become an auto buy author for me. The characters are the best part. The dynamic between the sisters is everything, They are each such distinct personalities that navigate the ever changing world so differently. The differing chapter povs allows for the world to develop clearly and naturally. Especially the city pov, it adds so much to the story.

As soon as this book was announced it instantly became one of my most anticipated titles of 2024, with Our Wives Under The Sea being one of my favourite books. I don’t really know how to describe Private Rites but I loved it! It’s beautiful and chilling and emotional. The closest comparison for me is The Haunting of Hill House, with its complex familial relationships and discussions of grief and trauma.

My favourite thing about this book is its characters, the three sisters at the core of this story are so well developed. Switching between their perspectives offers such drastically different outlooks and it allows you to really sympathise with each while simultaneously understanding the hostilities between them.

The horror here feels almost ambient, lurking at the back of the story ever present and increasing in intensity. There’s so much existential dread in this slow apocalypse, watching a world changing as characters fight for some sense of normalcy. It is entirely engrossing and immersive.

I can’t recommend this enough it was incredible, I can’t wait to read it again!

Julia Armfield’s second novel after her Polari Prize winning “Our Wives Under The Sea” which in its brief but heavy in water-metaphor pages managed to combine myth, fable, submarine adventure and gothic horror in a subliminal exploration of queer love and of grieving.

And this has many similarities to its predecessor: an emphasis on the exploration of liminality and particularly fluidity - both in literal physical form and in gender/sexuality; a combination of genres with a heavy dose of horror (both gothic literature and mainstream movie inspired); queer love; grief as a central motif – although with a much stronger ambiguity in response in this novel.

It is explicitly King Lear inspired – three daughters (Isla, Irene, Agnes) and a despotic/tyrannical father (here an pre-eminent modernist architect who has died just as the novel begins) whose choice of how to bestow his legacy (here both before and after his death) causes tension between the daughters.

The setting is a Cli-Fi Ballardian Dystopia – a flooded and increasingly submerged City – but one where for most of the urban inhabitants a rather resigned response of Bureaucracy and Dailiness (phoning in to say that a collapsed bridge on your commute means you will be late for work) has replaced climate activism. Those who do more actively respond (who for most of the novel are very much off-page) tend to resort to countryside communes or even pagan style rituals (or of course rites). In a rather nice touch some of those more resigned to their fate instead take part in online forums where they “role play a very particular kind of normality” – discussing say walking around their dry garden and the meals they will cook from now-unavailable foods.

As an aside timing is everything for this novel – published in 2022 as wildfires swept the UK (including my childhood village) a novel portraying a near future of almost continuous rain, inexorably rising waters and marine-life infested cities would have looked very odd. Published in June 2024 with our apparently perma-pour-down year it feels very real indeed. Further it fits the current electoral sense of a sinking economy with the mainstream parties rather resigned to decline, and those on the extreme left and right retreating into their own exclusionary cults.

As a second aside this is not a novel heavy on world building (although perhaps world sinking would be a more appropriate phrase) – very deliberately non specific as to time and place (although near-future London functioned well for me as a way to anchor myself – pun intended) and silent on the climatology or wider global picture: this later omission I think neatly framing the twin responses of apathetic coping or apocalyptical cult.

In terms of the novel itself – for most of its length its main focus is the characters of and dynamics between the three sisters – whose relationships have been inexorably fractured by their father’s favoritism.

Isla, the eldest and a counsellor, is obsessed with organisation and with fixing things – she is in the process of a divorce from her wife Morven who has moved to one of the communes.

Irene – an academic specialising in Christianity and silence – seems wired for conflict; she seems convinced that it is largely due to her sisters having an ingrained expectation of her, but the conflict often spills into her relationship with Jude (who identifies as they).
Agnes – is the youngest, born years after the other and to a different mother (after Isla and Irene’s increasingly wayward mother committed a Woolfian suicide) – she works in a café and is seen by the others as unreliable, distant and disinterested. She forms a relationship with Stephanie who becomes one of the point of view characters, acting as an observer of the siblings. Agnes’s relationship with her sisters reaches crisis when their father’s house – an all glass masterpiece – is given to her in his will.

But against all of this there is an unsettling air of menace and slightly unexplained events – most centering around Agnes: slightly inconsistent behaviour from their father’s housekeeper; some carvings in the paternal house which we note that all the daughters assume was by another sibling; an odd and then café repeated encounter with a member of the medical staff outside the room where the girls view their father’s body; an almost obsessive encounter at the funeral – where a woman touches Agnes’s hair and compares it to Agnes’s mother (whose fate seems entirely unknown). Agnes in particular becomes increasingly paranoid about being watched and the older daughters recall incidents from their childhood that they were never really able to explain (including the apparent longstanding close relationship between the two mothers who would ostensibly seem to have been rivals).

And the book in its last pages as the siblings (who drift violently apart over the novel) try to talk through their differences and the way forward, only to realise far too late that they are caught up in a very different situation altogether with the book explicitly signalling the shift from Shakespearian family tragedy to horror: “This is the wrong genre, she thinks, and a figure in the doorway is smiling at her and there will never now be time for resolution, to finish the conversation they were trying to have.”

This novel may well find similar prize success to its predecessor – the 2025 RSL Encore Award for second novels seems a strong possibility and I would not be surprised to see this featuring on the inaugural 2024/25 Climate Fiction Prize. And this would be a bold but worth pick for the 2024 Booker or 2025 Women’s Prize.

Somewhere between 4 and 5 stars!

Not my usual genre but I was really drawn into this end-of-the-world dystopia by Armfield's beautiful writing.

A really absorbing book exploring the turbulent connections in sisterhood, queer love and mental health.

Absolutely loved this! Private Rites is a mesmerising story of sisterhood, love, loss and the end of the world. Armfield proves yet again that she is one of the most exciting writers of the moment. Read this!

I cannot explain to you how much I loved this book.
Julia Armfield is my favourite author and this novel only solidified that for me. It's haunting and funny and comforting in all the best ways.

Private Rites is a hard, unyielding novel about profoundly dysfunctional families, emotional abuse, mental health; all happening in an apocalyptic, end of the world as we know it, backdrop!

Water makes an appearance again, Armfield seem to be having quite a fascination with it!! Here it is less of a metaphor and more of a direct link to global warming. Water is permeating everything, the threat of water engulfing the world more of a reality than ever before. The pressure, both literal and metaphoric acting both as a backdrop and as a leading force in the character's actions.
The 3 sister seem to meander, float, through life despite everything happening around them, and so does the narrative, leaving the reader somewhat unsatisfied. Hard truths are hard to come by, and it could be frustrating, especially when one has no idea where the narrative is going! Is fair to say there's no enjoyment to be reaped at the end of it, and that's keeping it real, because let's be honest here: what is there to enjoy in a life of abuse?!

I have found the snow(metaphor) at the end, and it's many potential meanings, exhilarating: snow - a different form of water, snow blanketing everything - oblivion; snow - new beginnings; snow - the start of a new glacial era rather than just global warming. And I am still puzzling about Isla (I gave quite a few ideas, lol).

Despite not having enjoyed this novel, not in the true meaning of the word, I think Julia Armfield is a very interesting author and I am truly looking forward to what will come out of the pen next :)

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc copy of Private Rites by Julia Armfield for review.
⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Thoughts:

- Ever since reading Our Wives Under the Sea I have been in love with Julia's writing, and I would read absolutely anything she writes at this point.
- I especially love books with apocalyptic settings, and that ended up being my favourite element of this story. I loved that there are mini chapters throughout the book from the "City's" perspective where we get to see snapshots of inhabitants' lives and how they are coping in a world which is inevitably drowning.
- Armfield's writing is extremely subtle, and whilst there were sections of the book where the plot moved slowly, it feels like there was a lot of nuance woven into the story to unpack.
- Despite the intriguing setting, the plot is for the most part focused on the damaged relationship between the three sisters and how they navigate their father's death.
- I loved the book's exploration of time by flipping back and forth between perspectives in both the present and past memories; it plays with the idea that the echo of past moments live on and are relived in the present.
- My favourite section of the book by far was the ending which picked up in pace and left me completely shocked.
- If you enjoy speculative fiction I would recommend giving this one a try!

DNF - Found the writing very basic and uninspiring. The characters felt very false and boring. Overall just not enjoyable.

Julia Armfield’s third book is just as atmospheric as her previous works. As precise as ever, her ability to create unease engulfs the reader in this story about three very different sisters.
Recommend

I read an eARC of this book so thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley.

I found myself really enjoying the writing in this book but it felt like there wasn’t a huge amount of plot. That was right up until the last few chapters when wow! The author absolutely pulled the rug out from under my feet and the intensity just went off the scale. The breadcrumbs were all there, everything made sense and it was just amazing. What absolute skill as an author!

Before the ending blew my mind, I was ruminating on how the author had explored so well, the dark recesses of her characters minds. Most of the book is told from the perspective of three sisters (though we do also have the occasional view from their partners which were some of my favourite chapters). These sisters are going through the loss of their father in a city that is increasingly flooded. We see their darkest thoughts, the inner monologue that they wouldn’t want others to hear. If you enjoy deep character exploration and seeing behind people’s masks, this books delivers this in abundance.

“Sisterhood, she thinks, is a trap. You all get stuck in certain roles forever.”

This book felt a lot longer than 208 pages, in the very best way. So much packed into a relatively compact read. Apocalyptic, queer, what it is to go on with the end of days ever nearer. The examination of family ties and what it is to be family, the confines of sisterhood in defining you as a person.

Julia Armfield can write a character, and with this artful use of multiple POVs, you know these people. I will say, I wasn’t particularly a fan of any of the characters (sure I’m not alone in this). The complex and messy upbringing of three sisters, Isla, Irene and Agnes culminating in this toxic dynamic, you won’t want to look away.

From the very first page, this book is drenched in foreboding. The endless rain and the flooding of homes and highways, biblical in connotation. Armfield alludes to this omniscient stature of their late father and his house that seemingly remains aloft whilst the landscape diminishes. The power of water to wash away and start anew.

“in time in time in time…”

Review will be posted on Instagram 11/06.

Private Rites

Three women, Isla, Irene who are sisters and their half-sister Agnes have gathered together after their father’s death. None of them like each other and rarely keep in contact. They are all queer; one is in the middle of a divorce from her wife, another is still married and the youngest, Agnes, is about to fall in love with a stranger that she met in a bar. Isla and Irene like to gang up on Agnes, their mother is dead and Agnes’ mother has vanished, whereabouts unknown. Their father, a once renowned architect, was a bully and a control freak. He liked to play games with them, pitting them against each other and at other times be indifferent and disappointed in them. And he plays games until the very end when the will is read. He referred to his second wife as ‘nothing, a miscalculation. No need to waste another thought.’
The three try to live their lives amongst the chaos that the world is in. Isla is a therapist who, unbeknown to her patients, gives them inappropriate nicknames, Irene has abandoned her Phd and Agnes likes to write the wrong name on customers cups in the coffee shop in which she works. But the world has changed, rising water has engulfed it and people can only live in cities. Car and plane travel are no longer possible and instead there are jetties and water taxis. Now people live in high rises. It rains constantly with very occasional bursts of sunshine. People still bitch about their jobs and colleagues but they now live in a world controlled by water. Burials are no longer feasible and strange cults and groups appear and disappear back into the shadows again. People vanish, lost forever or take desperate acts, ‘A man enters the bedroom of his sleeping children with a pillow in his hand.’ Protests are rife whereas other continue with a semblance of their former lives. They have become accustomed to frequent power cuts and their lives being reduced further and further. There’s a feeling of society winding down and on the very edge of anarchy but also with a numb acceptance of its fate.
However, the wealthy can afford custom built houses that can lift them out of the water. These were the clientele of their father and his own house was designed to rise up, almost in perpetual motion, out of the rising water. He lived in the wealthy part of the city.
After the funeral, where Agnes feels watched and is upset by being touched by a complete stranger, Isla asks their father’s housekeeper, Caroline, to continue looking after the house. Finally, they gather together again at their father’s house to discover one last unwelcome surprise and their ultimate fate.
This was a more challenging read than the author’s previous book, ‘Our Wives Under the Sea’, which I loved. So, I was really looking forward to reading this. However, the sisters aren’t very likable characters and, at several points, I did think ‘Can you please stop sniping at each other!’ The parallels with Shakespeare’s King Lear were very clear and there were other references throughout the book. For example, the Folk Horror classic. Blood on Satan’s Claw’, a nod to Edward Hopper and the eternal rain of ‘Blade Runner’.
One of the most convincing elements was the short scenes in which the city is described in eerie, unsettling images. Dead bodies of seals and cormorants drift through the water, its levels are always rising and every so often the pylons from an abandoned cable car system poke up from its depths. A cable car occasionally falls into it to be swallowed up never to be seen again. GM tomatoes and chicory coffee replace foods that can no longer be grown in the traditional way. Venice vanished 20 years ago.
But there are moments of beauty; a flock of pelicans fly past when seen from a rooftop, Agnes’ lover, Stephanie, finds a swimming pool for her on another roof and ‘the rain is cold, hard against the skin like as a shower of pennies.’
However, ‘Private Rites’ really got under my skin with a disturbing and possible future scenario. It reminded me of J G Ballard in its view of a future but not so dramatic. The world inexorably sliding into disaster. It wasn’t a quick read but it was an uncomfortable and unsettling one.
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.