A wonderful follow up to 2022's Our Wives Under the Sea, Private Rites is a uniquely calm and quiet piece of weird fiction, unsettling in its stillness more so than its drama. Armfield has found a niche writing stories about water, and that is on show here once more, an unnamed city left bedraggled and mouldering from the effects of rising climate change. Amidst this metropolis are three women - Isla, Irene and Agnes - sisters all at odds with each other, a byproduct of a strange and twisted childhood, brought up by their aloof, architect father. The small details of their lives, their fears and traumas and little habits, are unpacked in a dazzling display of mundanity; I mean that as a compliment, Armfield is able to present the everyday, even that set during an apocalypse, with such brilliance that you cannot look away. Agnes, Isla and Irene are not necessarily likeable in the traditional sense, but we cannot help but feel moved by the minutiae of their relationship with each other, and how it finally begins to drag them down towards the depths.

All the while, the City itself is a living breathing character, charting its and its occupants' little fluctuations, the steady breakdown of a stable society. I can see the influence of Alison Rumfitt's Tell Me I'm Worthless here, the inextricable relation of persons to a shared space so vivid that the space itself has voice, has the ability to speak a truth the sad, unfortunate inhabitants are left unable to reach. A truly magnificent novel from a shining talent.

This was my first Julia Armfield novel and oh my, they might just be my new favourite writer. Atmospheric, outstanding and bone-chilling (in more ways than one), I adored this all-too-familiar family drama against the backdrop of a city, and a world, slowly ending. Speaking of, the ending is PHENOMENAL. You absolutely must read this, and I absolutely must go read their other books immediately.

When I found out Julia Armfield wrote another novel, I 𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 the #NetGalley request button.

In Private Rites, three sisters come together after the death of their architect father to navigate relationships — the estranged ones with each other, their own relationships, and their complex feelings about their father — set against the backdrop of a city where the rain never stops, society has fled to high storeys, and rituals sneak back into society in the face of beckoning disaster…

You can feel Agnes, Isla and Irene’s uncomfortable sibling dynamic after their father turned them against each other, and how they’re stuck in roles they can’t quite escape as adults. It’s reflected in their relationships with partners too — Isla’s ex-wife, Irene’s gender-neutral partner and Agnes’s girlfriend — all facing the desire to both push people away and to be loved. I enjoyed all three sisters, but I had a soft spot for Agnes, and Irene’s partner Jude is a breath of fresh air. Also, without risking spoilers, their father’s house is so cleverly used.

Armfield is masterful at making the water looming and watchful, interlacing descriptions of the rain and disintegration of public services with everyday mundanity, the ‘we may as well get on with it’ approach creating an undercurrent (pardon the pun) of unease. As much as I’ll remember the book’s crescendo — shocking, but not for its own sake; a natural conclusion to the three sisters’ quest to love each other — I’ll also remember these creeping, quiet moments. 𝘈𝘨𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘱 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘬𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘮, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘮𝘪-𝘥𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘺𝘦𝘳, 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘮𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭. 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨, 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘷𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦?

Private Rites joins the ranks of CliFi that grip my heart and quietly terrify me. I cannot recommend it enough!

Unsurprisingly, absolutely stunning. Somehow, Julia Armfield's writing just keeps getting better and better.

I loved Our Wife's Under The Sea so I was really excited for this one and it didn't disappoint. It kept me just as hooked and immersed throughout.

‘At what point,she wanted to say, do we stop being the direct product of our parents? At what point does it start being our fault?’ This is probably the main theme of the novel. Like in King Lear there are three daughters who have been pitted against each other all their lives aided and abetted by their own father. Set in a future where the world has been taken over by the results of climate change the novel brilliantly portrays the fallout after the death of a father. I loved this book and have only deducted one star as I felt the ending was a bit rushed.

Lesbian climate fiction inspired by King Lear was always going to be an easy sell for me.

The fact that it's Julia Armfield meant there were no lengths I wouldn't go to get an arc for this book. I loved Salt Slow and obsessively recommended Our Wives Under the Sea to anyone I met for the first six months after reading it; it's imprinted on my soul.

So, it's safe to say I'm the target audience. That aside, I actually do have mixed feelings about this book.

The world-building is where it really shines; it's masterful. It's creepy, haunting, and very dystopian depictions of our lives once the sea levels rise are so real I imagined looking out the window to find us there already. The chapters from the city's perspective were some of my favourite. When inevitably, there's a post-COVID fiction module on an MA syllabus somewhere, this will undoubtedly be on it. Our protagonists' lives, which carry on as normal in this very unsettling, unfair, and dangerous world, will be immediately familiar to every reader. Julia has a real intimacy when she writes about water; her love and fear for it always comes through in surprising ways, and it's what I love about her writing. This book sinks into your bones like a wet day.

Most of Private Rites follows the three sisters, Irene, Iris, and their younger half-sister Agnes, with whom they have a very difficult relationship. Agnes takes risks to feel something, struggles with intimacy, and is by far the most narratively interesting of the sisters. There are three scenes emblazoned on my brain from this book, and they all involve Agnes. This is to the detriment of Irene and Iris (our Goneril and Regan for those who love Lear), who just aren't as compelling as individual characters, and more serve to show the lasting impact of their overbearing father after his death.

The novel takes a very sharp narrative turn towards the end. It's heavily signposted throughout, so you know something weird is coming. Nonetheless, it does feel jarring, like another story that's been tacked on suddenly. This disjointed feeling is ever-present and makes this book a little difficult to settle into throughout.

Private Rites is a novel about three sisters as the world slowly floods, coming to terms with their father's death and their relationship to each other. The rain has been ongoing for so long now, and sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes live separate lives, until their rich architect father's death forces them back together. There's his distinctive house, there's the mystery of their mothers and what happened to them, and there's the sense that this bleak, claustrophobia world expects something from them.

Vaguely 'King Lear if all of the daughters were queer', this apocalyptic novel feels very much a follow up to Armfield's Our Wives Under The Sea, a damp-infused book in which not very much happens, but there's a lingering sense of dread. The narrative moves between focusing on each of the three sisters, plus a kind of chorus of the 'city' that seems to be non-specifically London, and for a long time, the book seems to mostly be a family drama with the backdrop of this flooded world. I really wasn't sure where it was headed, but the climax of the novel gives it a bit of a twist, bringing together some of the threads in a maybe unexpected way that changes the genre.

The 'all three sisters are queer' angle is interestingly explored, with each of them in a different place in their romantic lives and particularly Irene and Agnes' relationships are important throughout the book. Agnes' character development throughout the novel was one of my favourite elements, and I also liked Irene and Jude's relationship. Iris is pleasingly flawed as a character, trying to control what she cannot, and once you get into the book enough to understand who these characters are and what's going on with them, it is very character-driven.

I found it hard to get into the book at first, as it doesn't feel like it is going anywhere, and I don't think this was helped by the fact that I'd not read anything about it beforehand so wasn't aware it is vaguely King Lear (which is one of my least favourite Shakespeare plays). However, as the slow tension rose (and so did the floodwaters), it became more gripping, and by the end, it felt like it did have a good payoff, though it does leave quite a lot of ambiguous. Armfield is great at the literary unsettling novel, and Private Rites is a fascinating take on a climate crisis future and sisters with pent up resentments once it gets into it.

Loved this! Admittedly I didn't love Julia Armfield's debut, Our Wives Under the Sea, so I was a little hesitant going into this new novel of hers. Thankfully, though, I loved it! The writing is great--nuanced and evocative--the sisters/family drama always compelling, and the dystopian setting vivid and well-drawn.

Private Rites is a gripping story about three sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes, who reunite after their father's death, in a city on the brink of collapse -sinking due to rain. The book explores their complicated family ties and personal struggles amidst the environmental crisis.
A beautifully written and compelling read.
An absolute must-read for lovers of thought-provoking and dystopian books

Julia Armfield’s second novel is one that I can't get out of my head, days after I finished it. It’s so many things, all at once - a portrayal of a crumbling family, a portrayal of a crumbling world. An ode to love and an exploration of grief. I am struggling to articulate what I loved so much about this deft, elegant, strange novel - I think I need to read it again immediately.

Private Rites is, loosely, a speculative fiction novel crossed with King Lear. It concerns three sisters - Isla, Irene and Agnes - who come together after the passing of their estranged father. The 3 women are struggling with navigating life in their slowly drowning city - it’s been raining for years now, not letting up, and somehow life still goes on. It’s very, very slow - the blurb almost does it a disservice in setting up a plot arc that doesn’t appear until 90% into the book. I would have enjoyed the novel even more if I hadn’t wasted time looking for the plot mentioned in the blurb.

So yeah, not a plotty novel; more a wildly atmospheric character study of these 3 women. Each have their own personal crosses to bear, as well as a difficult relationship with one another. Armfield is at her best when she’s exploring the interpersonal dynamics between the three; these scenes sit in that wonderful midpoint between painful and funny.

Armfield’s narrative voice has strengthened even further since her excellent debut, the wry and affecting Our Wives Under The sea. The narrative voice is full of dry wit and painful truths about the world around us, as well as the characters and how they see themselves. It’s a surprisingly wise book - I found something to highlight in my proof copy on every page, and a couple of lines could only be marked with a gasp and a “!!!!” in the margins.

I loved this "mundane apocalypse" novel; I felt winded by its deep intelligence and heart by the time I finished it.
Julia Armfield is an unbelievably talented writer, finely balancing character development with a deeply plausible end-of-the-world scenario. It reminded me a lot of her short story, The Great Awake, but even more highly developed. It's an uneasy novel, for sure. And I loved every second of it.

Set against the backdrop of a climate crisis, three sisters reunite in the wake of their (very rich) father’s death. That’s really all I want to say about the plot; actually, I might struggle to say anything else about the plot and keep it even relatively succinct. This is a book that really relies on you engaging with the characters and their dynamic to keep you going. The plot is pretty sparse and slow moving, despite a constant sense of dread and the feeling that something is not quite right. It would take a talented writer to make it all work half as well as it does.

Lucky, then, that Armfield is an unbelievably talented writer, because this is really just fantastic on every level. Every character has such a distinct voice and personality - each so well balanced so that the reader is able to be annoyed at them all, but never dislike them. Armfield builds the world so effectively without ever dwelling unnecessarily on details we don’t need. The imagery of the flooded, grey and constantly raining city is so vivid, so evocative, and so perfectly adds to the feeling of unease. Does everything come together perfectly in the end? I’m not sure, but I’m not sure that I’m bothered either. I loved every second spent with these characters, exploring their trauma and finding ways to cope with the end of the world, all mixed with a healthy amount of classic horror tropes.

In short: an absolute banger. I’ll be rereading sooner rather than later.

When the world has drowned - where do the survivors swim for sanctuary?

As the water rises, and our systems collapse the dread sets in. From the corner of your eye it creeps, like mould across a wall. When your back is against the wall and the air is running out; do you give in to the inevitable, fight for salvation or…join a cult?

Armfield’s fascination with water and the duality of its life giving and destructive properties keep this gorgeously taut story afloat allowing it to cast a cold watchful light on the complexities of family, queer relationships and the delicate webs in which our society is weaved.

Self described as a “mundane apocalypse”, Private Rites presents a realistic vignette of the path toward end of the world. One born of apathy and controlled decay right up until that final voice is silenced.

Thank you to 4th Estate for the ARC

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for a copy of this book.

This is the first book by Julia Armfield that I've read. I requested an ARC because of all the glowing pre reviews on goodreads and everyone's excitement about this future release. However, it was not what I was expecting. Although this is a well written novel, it didn't entertain me.

Absolutely phenomenal. I was hooked from the very start. Brilliant character building and an intriguing plot. The prose was beautifully written. Honestly a highlight of 2024!

Thank you to NetGalley and 4th Estate for the ARC. This is another offering by Julia Armfield that gradually gets under your skin and haunts you long after you’ve finished reading the book. The story of three sisters, Isla, Irene and Agnes, their relationships with each other, with their emotionally abusive father, the mother who disappeared from their lives when they were very young, the house they grew up in and the numerous strangers who seem to be always watching. Armfield’s writing is often beautiful and always full of spot-on turns of phrase and observations. This is a novel born of the climate crisis and the rain, the unrelenting, claustrophobic, never-ending greyness of it is as much a character of the book as any of the main protagonists. If I have a criticism it is that the depiction of the constantly squabbling sisters got a little wearisome, especially towards the middle of the book when it began to seem as if that was all the book was going to be about - but then we got to the denouement of the book, when all the hints and twists came together in one absolutely bonkers ending. Just fabulous.

I finished this late last night (or early this morning) and then lay in the dark for a full hour still thinking about it. I had a similar feeling after Our Wives Under the Sea but this was darker, deeper, harder to shake.

Unsettling, elegant, brutal writing. I highlighted so many lines of prose, it became farcical. Just so many identifiable and relatable moments, thoughts and realisations. Excellent on family dynamics and marriage, the mundanity of the apocalypse made this the more frightening because it just all feels entirely inevitable. A slow, wet slide into nothing.

Basically, I will read anything Julia Armfield writes.

If you enjoyed the sogginess and lesbianism of Our Wives Under the Sea, you’re in for a treat because Private Rites is queerer and damper than ever.

I love Armfield’s writing and really enjoyed this, each sentence is really rich and poetic, and I found myself reading slower to try to soak it all in.

Most of the story reads like lit-fic, exploring three sisters who have recently lost their father, with whom they had a troubled relationship. We see their relationships with each other, and their significant others, the fallout of their difficult upbringing, all backdropped by the ever-rising water slowly drowning the city.

Underneath, there is a subtle undercurrent that something darker is going on, and this doesn’t come fully into focus until the very end.

I was fascinated by the characters, their stories, motivations, and relationships with each other. This is a thoroughly queer story and this, like with OWUtS, feels so refreshing and powerful to me in the realness and complexity of its depiction.

Different parts reminded me of Ling Ma’s Severance in terms of continuing with the mundanity of life as the world ends, as well as Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite with the flooding basements set apart from a wealthy family’s modernist house that nevertheless feels somehow haunted.

I think if you’re seeking a true horror story, this may be a bit disappointing, but I definitely felt harrowed throughout by the ways we can be cruel to those we love, the impending end of the world we feel helpless to do anything about, and by the additional promise of something worse still to come.

This is a climate dystopia book in which society is sliding slowly into the abyss - bleak in its realism in the way the world accepts, compartmentalises and copes with Ultimate Bad Weather, with the places they can go gradually shrinking in on them - forcing people into higher and higher buildings and cutting off access points to different parts of the world, then the city itself. While I was reading it I was so aware that the claustrophobia and continous, inevitable decay feels quite reminiscent of the current state of the UK - the creeping mold, the housing crisis, inept government and transport issues are all too familiar and it doesn't feel a world away from our own. Fun!

In the middle of this narrative are three sisters who are dealing with the looming absence of their newly dead, emotionally abusive father and trying to figure out how the relationships between each other and the people they love are shaped by both him and the world they've grown up in. I enjoyed how frankly dislikable these women often were (at lease Isla and Irene) and how the switching POV allowed us to see both how they percieve themselves and how each other. They also each have jobs, romantic lives that carry on going and have to adapt in the wake of the disasters around them.

Armfield's writing is gorgeous and insightful, I enjoyed the narrative tangents within the POVs and also within the 'City' POVs. This is a more ambitious book in terms of world building and character than Our Wives and in some ways feels like a less cohesive story overall but it's a great addition to the Armfield oeuvre and I can't wait to see what she does with water next!

Julia Armfield’s “lesbian Lear” takes three queer sisters and places them in the middle of - what she’s called - a “mundane apocalypse.” The sisters inhabit a drowned world, a place of unceasing rain which is slowly but inexorably wearing away its very foundations. Coastal regions have long ago disappeared, as have things like cars and plane travel, most people live in cities since these are the only areas that retain some semblance of what was formally normality. Government’s largely absent and when it does intervene incompetent. The wealthy inhabit custom-made houses in the higher-most regions while ordinary people are mainly confined to the upper reaches of crumbling high-rises. It’s a similar scenario to the ones that writers like Ballard found fascinating but, unlike Ballard’s work, there are few crescendos here, no violent rupture in the fabric of society. Instead, everything’s dying off by degrees: some people have joined end-of-the-world cults with their arcane rituals; a few gather together to stage futile protests; others simply choose to vanish. But the mass of the population lives in a kind of stupefied denial, too fearful to look directly into the face of disaster. They cling to old routines, commuting to work, moaning about their bosses or colleagues or flatmates. They come together with one another but just as often drift apart.

Armfield’s vivid descriptions of rain seeping into every corner of daily life owes a partial debt to Arthur Machen, a favourite writer of Armfield’s, particularly the emphasis on its impact on mental as much as physical space. Amidst this simmering discontent, siblings Isla, Irene and half-sister Agnes are intent on maintaining a careful distance from one another. Although Isla and Irene are united in their contempt for younger, half-sister Agnes. Agnes meanwhile takes pleasure in small acts of subversion from mislabelling coffee cups in the café where she works to fucking random women in changing rooms. But the siblings’ awkward stalemate’s disrupted by their father’s death, a once-revered architect and an exacting, sadistic parent. His death brings the sisters back to the house he built for them, stirring up long-buried emotions and unsettling childhood memories, conjuring an atmosphere of growing, Jacksonian unease. Then weird things start to happen all of which appear to be converging on Agnes.

Armfield’s prose is impressively sinuous, her imagery striking, and her vision of a blighted future created by climate change all too convincing. But as a novel I found this unbalanced, difficult to place. On one level it’s an unusual blend of folk horror and speculative fiction but the bulk of the actual narrative’s caught up in detailing the fractured interactions between the three sisters and the aftermath of early trauma – which wasn’t always that appealing to me. There are some pleasing folkloric and mythic elements woven into Armfield’s story but they’re oddly underdeveloped, and I thought the final reveal was too heavily signposted – perhaps because I’m overly familiar with the classic horror movies Armfield loves and directly/indirectly references throughout. But perhaps that’s the point? That standard horror scenarios are less than scary when compared to the sheer scale of the environmental blight that lies ahead. Armfield’s story hints at alternative ways of tackling this looming disaster but her ultimate message seems less about concrete solutions than it is emotional responses: the importance of empathy, of making and sustaining meaningful connections.