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.

I loved Our Wives Under the Sea and thought Julia had a lot to live up to… but Private Rites was even better! It draws stark observations on society, politics and the environment which reflect our own times. Beautiful prose, poetic at times, and shapely drawn characters. The best book I’ve read this year. Armfield is undoubtedly one of the best writers of our generation.

Another weird, wonderful, waterlogged work from Armfield, who is fast becoming one of my must-read authors. The numbness and detachment in the face of calamity is so clever and compelling.

My first experience of Julia Armfield's writing and the eerie sense of catastrophe that flows through her writing, just eking out enough space to make it uncomfortable really had me hooked.

A queer take on King Lear, where three sisters Irene, Isla and Agnes battle with their relation to one another. An imposed sisterhood that not one of them knows how to deal with, set against the backdrop of a drowning world where disaster is impending but the expected panic is rather, well...absent.

Rising waters has left society vapid and whilst some seek alternative ways of living, cults to focus their hopes on, the sisters somewhat drift in and out of anger, fear and resentment not knowing where it will take them.

Armfield's writing is dark and witty which is why I remained so hooked throughout, she's masterful in her prose mimicking the gradual seeping of water into society until the pressure is just enough to tip the scale.

Julia Armfield’s newest book was beautiful, 3 sisters stuck in mundane grief at the end of the world. I felt a sense of fluidity and constant motion, mirroring the inner turmoil and unresolved grief of the sisters. Each of the three sisters is portrayed with such depth and nuance that their individual and collective struggles become deeply personal to the reader. Climate dysptopia goes wrong so often for me but armfield and her tendency towards watery rhetoric works so well for my soul that always misses the sea.


[full instagram reel review pending]

Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time but are forced to reconnect when their estranged father dies. They must navigate their grief in a world that has not stopped raining for a long time. When they reconnect, clearing the grand glass house of their father’s belongings, something sinister seems to be unfolding.

The prose is just… utterly indescribable. Honestly. The way Julia Armfield can write leaves me speechless and in awe in equal measures. The descriptions are so vivid and close that it almost feels claustrophobic, like you are trapped in the rainstorms, but also so expansive that it feels real, like this couldn’t possibly be dystopian. I don’t know how to put this into words, so I’m just going to hope I’m making sense (I know I’m not).

My favourite part of this novel, and the part which is going to stick with me for a long time, is the relationship between the three sisters, how their dynamic changes based on their relationships with each other, and how horribly nasty people can be when they’re so close to someone, like a sister. It was a fascinating dynamic to read as this dynamic changes through the different stages of their grief, and based on whether they share a mother and father or just a father.

Publishes on June 6th - really looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks of this one.

4.25 stars

Private Rites follows Isla and Irene, two sisters in their thirties, and their younger half-sister Agnes, in her early twenties, in a very near future where it has been raining for over a decade and most parts of the world are entirely flooded. The population largely refuses to address this problem head on, still dutifully commuting to work on ferries, paying their rent, and living in the upper floors of high-rise buildings. Many of the rich live in custom-built buildings on higher hills where the "ground" still exists as a concept. The sisters' largely-estranged father was an architect who designed these buildings, and his death precipitates the plot and the sisters trying (or avoiding) to reconnect with each other.

This is a very quiet novel and I really enjoyed the atmosphere, the rain feels very present both in the way the characters acknowledge it and the way they don't. It is mostly a slice of life with the added drama of the sisters navigating relationships between each other and their partners. There is however a slight creepy mystery surrounding Agnes - who was her mother and why does she seem to be being watched?

It's the slice of life and relationships that I most enjoyed about this book; in the last 20 pages or so the book suddenly goes from 0 to 100 and a development that I wasn't massively expecting happens. It felt like I had started reading a completely new book and I don't think I really liked the sudden shift and change in pace.

As a quiet but ever-present climate apocalypse novel, this was excellent and is one of my favourites of the year for that. The writing was so good, Armfield is really a master of her craft. The ending does bring down my rating as it felt out of place for me and doesn't fit with my own interpretation of the book.

"Attempting to recall when it was that people realised the emergency was already upon them, the warning signs noted then duly forgotten in favour of squabbling about small things, about taxes and football championships and protests that caused offence or caused traffic, of doggedly ploughing a course."

A creepy, haunting release from the ever talented Julia Armfield. Well crafted, difficult to put down.

'Sisterhood, she thinks, is a trap.’

We oughtn’t to be saying that Julia Armfield is ‘bestselling’; we ought to be saying she is indispensable. I’m unabashedly an acolyte, and in ‘Private Rites’, Armfield makes you do just the right amount of work as her reader - you’ve got to cross half the distance between you and the author to meet her there on the page, in her forbidding, occulty, end-is-nigh cataclysm novel.

Similar to the way in which Armfield most giftedly reshaped Classical narratives from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in her short story collection ‘Salt Slow’, in the catastrophic ‘Private Rites’ she recasts Shakespeare’s three-sisters motif with fluid originality:

‘It occurs to [Isla] that there was always one shitty witch in Macbeth, the one that never says anything useful and always just seems to be filling in space between the other two. Most of the time she feels like this witch is Irene, although sometimes it’s Agnes and sometimes it’s all of them, which doesn’t really make sense but still feels fundamentally accurate.’

To explore the three sisters’ experiences, Armfield invites her readers to wear Isla, to put on Irene, to step into Agnes; to inhabit them each tactilely, bodily. Armfield wants her reader to arrive at her characters’ psychology through their physicality. The characters’ thoughts are expressed through their felt senses: ‘[Irene] looks at her sister, the square chin and long green eyes, the way she holds her head like something heavy she is trying to carry back from the supermarket with both hands already full’; ‘[their] mother, pushing Irene’s face into the water when she combed her hair for nits; the eternity of seconds during which Irene believed she’d never let her up.’

Agnes's character portrait, especially, is at once heartbreaking and hot; confusing and irresistible:

‘After she’s gone, Agnes isn’t quite sure what to do with herself, settling at first for pulling off her jeans and t-shirt and walking the flat in a wide circle, stopping in the centre to tilt back on her heels and then resettle before putting the t-shirt back on again. She feels odd, prickled over, the comedown combined with a feeling like skin being removed from hot water; shrink and tingle, the sweat through the lines of her palms.’

Perhaps the ‘Queer Lear’ label that Irene’s gives them is more apposite than Isla’s comparison with Macbeth’s Weird Sisters, though, since ‘Private Rites’ welcomes an interpretation that spotlights the tragedy of family betrayal and the sisters’ dysfunctional dynamic with their father: ‘“King Lear and his dyke daughters,” Irene said, and then wished she hadn’t.’ Of course, Armfield’s authentic representation of women who love women (‘“So you got serious because someone died in front of you and now you're going on a minibreak to a funeral. That's the gayest thing I've ever heard.”’) goes hand in hand with her supreme understanding of the meaningful lived experience:

‘It has been so many years – a decade of this, another decade before that of almost this. People take supplements, for vitamin D, for energy, complain the damp has reached their bones. It rains constantly and the fact of the rain, of the rain’s whole great impending somethingness, runs parallel to the day-to-day of work and sleep and lottery tickets, of yoga challenges, of buying fruit and paying taxes, of mopping floors and taking drugs on weekends, and reading books and wondering what to do on dates. It’s exhausting, as it always was, to live with such a breadth of things to take up one’s attention – exhausting, the way there can be too much world, even in its final stages. Exhausting, to be so busy and so bored with no time left for either.’

As in her previous works, she calls to Western art and literature to speak for shared experiences, as when, reflecting upon suffering, Isla tries to recall what W. H. Auden’s poem ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ says in its response to the painting ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ by Bruegel about human suffering:

‘how it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along. The point, of course, being the whole bright dailiness of agony, the way Icarus in the Bruegel painting could crash to earth as little but a background detail while the bland spool of life went on in the foreground; the ploughman at his plough and the fabric of the day untouched, uninterrupted.’

On top of that, reading ‘Private Rites’, I felt again as I have with Armfield’s previous books - that sense of poetry in her prose: ‘The evening struggles, darkness borne down heavy and replete. The rain falls, the night continues - black horizon and the pull of what's beneath.’ I think her acuity with the English language is what most earns ‘Private Rites’ a comparison with Shakespeare. And with that: the novel’s scope, its new world, uncanny within familiar bounds; the inter-relatedness of characters, including with their environment by means of pathetic fallacy; Armfield’s lyricism and downright unearthly skill with figurative language (‘sometimes she pictured her mother spreading across her like lichen, like something resembling skin’; ‘Isla snorts, puts her hand to her mouth as if to prevent something falling out, worries it might be her heart and swallows’).

Shakespearean in style then, but also in tone: I’d say overall that ‘Private Rites’ is clipped (and this is all tied up with the work Armfield invites her reader to undertake in order to meet her halfway – forgive me if I’m waffling). The novel moves from the surreal viewpoint of one sister to the dismal viewpoint of another abruptly, signifying the way – in this overwrought dystopia – that every character’s lifetime is soon to be cut short. And that brings us to the crucial point of the novel: inheritance. The sisters’ varied paternal inheritances; their own legacies about to be terminated. That’s to say nothing of the final scene, and what’s been passed down through maternal lines. But this curtness – who can inherit from the sisters at the end of the world after all? – signals the inevitability in the novel. I’ve never felt split narrative pulling me through a novel with such immediacy before.

Julia Armfield writes this inevitability as both graceful and devastating. At the halfway point in the narrative, she artfully swings her reader out from relatively still (though apocalyptic) waters and into darker depths. Yet what can I say, other than experiencing it, about this ‘whole great impending somethingness’ (in the author’s own words) that pitches in, takes on heft, and swells and builds, insinuating. The full picture of this looming horror that has happened, or is happening, or will happen, materialises as you read; as each of Isla’s, Irene’s, and Agnes’s experiences intersect to make a singular comprehensible whole: ‘there is only one way back to the path.’

And throughout all, even this, there is the inexpressible joy of the reader at feeling so confidently kept and held by the author and the integrity of her writing. An ARC of ‘Private Rites’ might’ve just made my reading year! Deep, deep thanks to 4th Estate and William Collins for the joy and delight of getting to read an ARC of ‘Private Rites’.

I started this book twice because it sounded so intriguing, and because it has been raining solidly for the last two days so felt I was in the right frame of mind and environment. I enjoyed the writing, the intrigue and sibling rivalry but sadly for me it lacked a hook to keep me reading. I haven't read "our wives under the sea" but maybe I will as Mx Armfield obviously has some very loyal readers and I feel I'm probably missing something quite profound which I'm sure many others will enjoy.
Thank you to netgalley and 4th Estate for an advance copy of this book.

Our Wives Under the Sea was one of my absolute favourite reads of 2023, so naturally, I was incredibly excited to pick up Private Rites as soon as humanly possible.

We follow three estranged sisters, two of which are of similar ages, with the youngest of the three subsequently having been born to a different mother over a decade later. The setting is one in the midst of climate catastrophe, which seems both dystopian and distant, and yet eerily plausible. It won't stop raining. Venice has long since disappeared, an almost myth in our protagonist's timelines, and most people are now living in urban areas, with rural settings settled mostly underwater.

Our sisters are pulled out of their everyday lives following a tragic event that draws them back together, and we witness them falling back into old, destructive patterns without missing a beat. The relationships between the sisters are what drives the narrative, particularly their charged interactions, and their repulsion for each other which juxtaposes beautifully with their penchant for clinging to each other, too.

This is a queer novel within which we read references to King Lear, and we find ourselves drawn into themes of climate catastrophe coupled with family dynamics.

And so much water. Which is of course what Armfield does best. This novel is so atmospheric, so lyrical, so strange and so compelling.

While the narrative feels less linear, and to me doesn't quite live up to my expectations following Our Wives, I devoured this novel whole, and can't wait to read what Armfield writes next.

Julia Armfield is an auto-buy for me at this point, and Private Rites did not disappoint. Was hooked from the moment Isla overhears the conversation about Magnolia Trees (iykyk). Atmospheric, complicated, disconcerting as heck. Read it in two sittings.

A very believable imaginative read. Rather a sad depiction of sibling rivalry caused by a father more interested in his career than his family.

‘Private Rites’ contains many incredibly quotable reflections on life under the pressures of a drowning world. As always, Julia's writing is exquisite, and the way she writes dialogue in particular is some of the most realistic and easy-flowing I've ever read.

I’d like to echo what many reviewers have said: this book is very different from what the synopsis implies. It leans more towards literary fiction than speculative/horror for the majority, with a significant focus on the dynamics of the sisters' relationships with one another and others who cross their paths.

I tend to have a hit-or-miss relationship with literary fiction, and since much of this book centres on the relationship between the sisters and their day-to-day lives following their father's death, I found myself struggling to get through some parts. The incessant conflict between the sisters bogged me down a bit in the first half, but this is likely just a product of my own mindset and should by no means put anyone off reading it.

This book is very different from Our Wives Under the Sea, which, for some, will be a good thing. For others, myself included, it may lead to this not being what you're expecting (don’t get me wrong I still really liked this book). The pacing felt a little disjointed to me for the first two-thirds, with it ramping up significantly in the last third. In retrospect, I can see how this may have been an intentional choice to add to the unsettling feelings.

The setting is so realistic yet unsettling. I love how Julia illustrated the atmosphere of a future world different yet eerily similar to our own, so well in fact that I often forgot the world was drowning while people went about their seemingly mundane lives.

The ending is one of those that will likely make or break the book for many people. For me personally, the ending took me by surprise in the best way and led me to skim through the whole novel again in search of references and comments that had definitely gone over my head the first time, perhaps owing to the fact that I read this book mostly in a daze before bed. It's definitely worth making sure your brain is fully switched on when reading this book to take in all the clever things that Julia does in her writing.

Lastly, it should go without saying, but I also, of course, loved the abundant queerness, which, in my opinion, paired with Julia's writing, is reason enough to pick this one up.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-arc. All opinions are my own.

Privates Rites again combines Armfield’s apparent love of water with her descriptive literary fiction to create a fascinating yet terrifying read. We look at the relationship between three sisters and a world that’s is going through an ‘apocalypse’ - albeit a new type of one. The rain hasn’t stopped for seemingly years and everything is wet or underwater. Infrastructure is failing and Armfield once again finds hope and solace in a bleak future.

The writing is superb, and I liked this book more than Our Wives Under the Sea. It had an unpredictable ending with twists of religion, politics, and departmentalism - amazingly stuck in real actions and doubts if the time. How would *we* react? Probably something like this! Would we create a new fangled way of living to cope with our changing world? Or would we desperately try and keep some semblance of society and bury our heads in the sand in the face of utter bleakness and an enemy that we cannot stop?

Private Rites builds Julia Armfield’s writing into probably her best work yet. Gripping, tense, and bleak, we learn to find hope with each other.