What do you think?
Rate this book
Private Rites
From the bestselling author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a haunting novel of three sisters navigating queer love and faith at the end of the world.
There’s no way to bury a body in earth which is flooded
It is a fact consigned to history along with almost everything else
It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves. Old places have been lost. Arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice.
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, he had long cut himself off from public life. 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. Something sinister seems to be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always been unusually interested in their lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperilled world.
There’s no way to bury a body in earth which is flooded
It is a fact consigned to history along with almost everything else
It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves. Old places have been lost. Arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice.
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, he had long cut himself off from public life. 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. Something sinister seems to be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always been unusually interested in their lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperilled world.
327 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 11, 2024
About the author
Julia Armfield
8 books1,620 followersJulia Armfield was born in London in 1990. She is a fiction writer and occasional playwright with a Masters in Victorian Art and Literature from Royal Holloway University. She was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 2019. She was commended in the Moth Short Story Prize 2017, longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Award 2018, and won the White Review short story prize 2018. Her first book, salt slow, is a collection of short stories about bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of its characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession and love. She won the Pushcart Prize in 2020. Julia Armfield lives and works in London.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 424 reviews
Want to read
May 9, 2024as long as julia armfield writes spooky gay literary horror, i will be reading
May 23, 2024
It's no secret that this was my most anticipated book of the year and that I had expected it to be my favourite book ever... was it? no. were my expectations too high? I fear they were.
Julia Armfield is an incredible novelist and writes about grief, sisterhood, womanhood and melancholy in a way that resonates with me so deeply; that was no different with this book. So much of this was eloquent, heart wrenching and painfully relatable and I did underline SO MANY quotes as my favourites.
As a novel though, I felt like so much of the apocalypse and end of the world state that the premise promised was missing. This book was incredibly quiet and subtle and whilst (from a narrative POV) I can understand why, it didn't make it any more of an enjoyable read. Dare I say I felt myself dragging my feet with it slightly. The last 50 pages for me were PERFECT and exactly what I wanted from this book ~ pretending that the rest was exactly like that, it would've been all I wanted and more.
Saying this though, I can acknowledge that my expectations were VERY high and perhaps that impacted my reading experience slightly. I would still definitely recommend this, especially if you have already established that you like Julia Armfield's writing!
(3.5 stars)
Julia Armfield is an incredible novelist and writes about grief, sisterhood, womanhood and melancholy in a way that resonates with me so deeply; that was no different with this book. So much of this was eloquent, heart wrenching and painfully relatable and I did underline SO MANY quotes as my favourites.
As a novel though, I felt like so much of the apocalypse and end of the world state that the premise promised was missing. This book was incredibly quiet and subtle and whilst (from a narrative POV) I can understand why, it didn't make it any more of an enjoyable read. Dare I say I felt myself dragging my feet with it slightly. The last 50 pages for me were PERFECT and exactly what I wanted from this book ~ pretending that the rest was exactly like that, it would've been all I wanted and more.
Saying this though, I can acknowledge that my expectations were VERY high and perhaps that impacted my reading experience slightly. I would still definitely recommend this, especially if you have already established that you like Julia Armfield's writing!
(3.5 stars)
March 26, 2024
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 obscure 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 conventional horror plots 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.
Thanks to Netgalley and to publisher 4th Estate
Rating: 3 to 3.5
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 conventional horror plots 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.
Thanks to Netgalley and to publisher 4th Estate
Rating: 3 to 3.5
Currently reading
December 31, 2023Would make a New Years sacrifice at midnight for a copy of this book. This is the book energy I need going into 2024.
March 21, 2024
Armfield is such an artful poet of wateriness. Set amidst a visceral imagining of climate catastrophe, this depicts with uncanny foresight what it might be like to live in a city like London when the waters rise: there are ramshackle jetties and water taxis trying to compensate for the fact that the outer edges of train lines are under water; outages of power are commonplace; alarms and sirens go off but no-one knows what they signify or what to do; and seals, pelicans and eels are moving into homes.
In the foreground are the archetypal three sisters - Isla, Irene and Agnes - all struggling in their own ways. The text references King Lear and Macbeth for necessary allusions to conflict and inheritance, a wayward and troubling father, absent mothers, from the former; and something more uncanny, weird and superstitious from the latter. For one of the outcomes of this end of days scenario is the rise of neo-religions and cults.
In some ways I found this narrative less definitive than Our Wives Under the Sea: the momentum is more blurred, less directional, more... watery and undefined. The denouement is, perhaps, a bit more dramatic with slightly less of a logical build-up. But those are small niggles.
What this succeeds in doing brilliantly is to delineate the nuanced relationships between the three sisters, the ways they simultaneously resent and cling to each other, the impact of parental troubles that shadow their growth and haunt their present. The febrile nature of their connections, and those they share with their wives and partners, is as brittle, enthreatened and undefined as the water in which this book is seeped. Their passivity, their hovering between safety, endurance and defiance is reflected more widely: Isla and Irene's cocooning is contrasted with Isla's ex-wife's determination to seek a better way to live - or, at least, see what's left of the world before it drowns. At the same time, the snarky, resentful, embittered yet, ultimately, strong sisterly bond feels tangible.
Atmospheric and controlled, this is a horrifying book delivered with a light touch. There have been other novelistic depictions of where our continued evasions of climate policies could lead but this feels like one of the best imagined to me precisely because it's not overly dramatic: the slow slide into disaster feels oddly realistic as is the idea of a population essentially abandoned by a government: it's the small touches that make this work - chicory coffee (presumably because the beans can't be grown or imported), the way life continues with people getting to work as far as they can (with only an off-stage mention of an anti-work protest), houses that either collapse or those, for the wealthy, that can lift themselves above the saturated earth.
The interdependencies between the personal story of the sisters and the wider one of climate catastrophe play off each other in a lovely mutuality. It's a bit of a wrench - and a relief! - to look up from this book and realise that it's not raining, that the water isn't rising in the basement... and that it's sunny outside my window!
Immersive, thoughtful and lyrical.
Many thanks to 4th Estate for an ARC via NetGalley
In the foreground are the archetypal three sisters - Isla, Irene and Agnes - all struggling in their own ways. The text references King Lear and Macbeth for necessary allusions to conflict and inheritance, a wayward and troubling father, absent mothers, from the former; and something more uncanny, weird and superstitious from the latter. For one of the outcomes of this end of days scenario is the rise of neo-religions and cults.
In some ways I found this narrative less definitive than Our Wives Under the Sea: the momentum is more blurred, less directional, more... watery and undefined. The denouement is, perhaps, a bit more dramatic with slightly less of a logical build-up. But those are small niggles.
What this succeeds in doing brilliantly is to delineate the nuanced relationships between the three sisters, the ways they simultaneously resent and cling to each other, the impact of parental troubles that shadow their growth and haunt their present. The febrile nature of their connections, and those they share with their wives and partners, is as brittle, enthreatened and undefined as the water in which this book is seeped. Their passivity, their hovering between safety, endurance and defiance is reflected more widely: Isla and Irene's cocooning is contrasted with Isla's ex-wife's determination to seek a better way to live - or, at least, see what's left of the world before it drowns. At the same time, the snarky, resentful, embittered yet, ultimately, strong sisterly bond feels tangible.
Atmospheric and controlled, this is a horrifying book delivered with a light touch. There have been other novelistic depictions of where our continued evasions of climate policies could lead but this feels like one of the best imagined to me precisely because it's not overly dramatic: the slow slide into disaster feels oddly realistic as is the idea of a population essentially abandoned by a government: it's the small touches that make this work - chicory coffee (presumably because the beans can't be grown or imported), the way life continues with people getting to work as far as they can (with only an off-stage mention of an anti-work protest), houses that either collapse or those, for the wealthy, that can lift themselves above the saturated earth.
The interdependencies between the personal story of the sisters and the wider one of climate catastrophe play off each other in a lovely mutuality. It's a bit of a wrench - and a relief! - to look up from this book and realise that it's not raining, that the water isn't rising in the basement... and that it's sunny outside my window!
Immersive, thoughtful and lyrical.
Many thanks to 4th Estate for an ARC via NetGalley
June 30, 2024
Private Rites follows the story of three queer sisters after their father's death, a strange architect who helped re-shape the world after constant rains started eroding geography. In what I assume (having read her debut Our Wives Under the Sea) is her signature style of beautiful prose, a focus on character study and water as a literary motif Armfield delicately handles themes such as estrangement, coping with grief and the complexity of family dynamics, especially between siblings.
As a background for her characters, who are all quite distanced, not very likable and really complex, the author chose an interesting setting – a quasi apocalyptic world about to go under water, about to drown. An apt analogy for the three sisters', or their whole family's, state, described in little interlude-chapters titled “City”.
The horror, the disturbing in this story is nothing explicit, it merely creeps in and out of the maybe a little monotonous story, but not being able to hide at the very harrowing ending, plops out of the water.
I can't say the ending makes up for the lengthy but gorgeous writing from the point of view of a horror enthusiast, it probably does not to the extend this was the case in her previous book, where the foreboding, the uncanny was much more present and resulted in a horrific explosion. This was similar but different. Still, for the reader who can put those expectations aside, a very worthwhile read nevertheless.
As a background for her characters, who are all quite distanced, not very likable and really complex, the author chose an interesting setting – a quasi apocalyptic world about to go under water, about to drown. An apt analogy for the three sisters', or their whole family's, state, described in little interlude-chapters titled “City”.
The horror, the disturbing in this story is nothing explicit, it merely creeps in and out of the maybe a little monotonous story, but not being able to hide at the very harrowing ending, plops out of the water.
I can't say the ending makes up for the lengthy but gorgeous writing from the point of view of a horror enthusiast, it probably does not to the extend this was the case in her previous book, where the foreboding, the uncanny was much more present and resulted in a horrific explosion. This was similar but different. Still, for the reader who can put those expectations aside, a very worthwhile read nevertheless.
October 8, 2023
Fucking get in! Julia Armfield is cemented as one of the best contemporary writers with this brilliant follow up to Salt Slow and Our Wives. More misery, more sex, more water - if somehow there are better books in 2024, it’ll be a mad year.
Read
June 15, 2024Following the enormous success of her debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield's Private Rites is a more subtle and literary affair, yet one that is also far larger in scope. This is an apocalypse novel set in a Britain that has been flooded by rising sea levels and endless rainfall. Yet, unlike many apocalypse stories, this one depicts a slow, almost dull collapse, and there is something so chilling and bleak in that.
Capitalism remains; people still commute and work their day jobs, only they must do so with difficulty. Everything is too expensive now, and travel is almost impossible. Our protagonists are three queer sisters from a King Lear-inspired family. Their father—an architect who designed homes that can adapt to the changing climate—has died, and that death forces these near-estranged sisters back together.
Family drama meets apocalyptic tale, Private Rites is a deeply bleak tale that settles into your bones. Written with heft and poetic consideration, it is a novel that will surely be studied in the future.
My full thoughts: https://booksandbao.com/essential-lit...
Capitalism remains; people still commute and work their day jobs, only they must do so with difficulty. Everything is too expensive now, and travel is almost impossible. Our protagonists are three queer sisters from a King Lear-inspired family. Their father—an architect who designed homes that can adapt to the changing climate—has died, and that death forces these near-estranged sisters back together.
Family drama meets apocalyptic tale, Private Rites is a deeply bleak tale that settles into your bones. Written with heft and poetic consideration, it is a novel that will surely be studied in the future.
My full thoughts: https://booksandbao.com/essential-lit...
June 16, 2024
"Isla had picked at the cuticle of her thumb with her ring finger and nodded dumbly along with this, tried to remember the sequence of a poem she’d wanted to quote to a patient earlier in the week, about Old Masters and 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."
Private Rites is, to me, a novel about the question of the everyday within the disastrous. That is, how do we continue to live our everyday lives while in the midst of an ongoing disaster? How can something that is catastrophic, life-altering on a global scale, become subsumed into, or sit alongside, everyday life?
Wherever you are in Private Rites, you are, just like the characters, forced to reckon with the inexorable, immovable, undeniable reality of its central disaster: it will not stop raining. There is rain everywhere, water everywhere, whole cities flooded, their infrastructure long gone. This is the world the characters of the novel must live in, and what makes the novel so compelling, I think, is that simple fact: that they need to continue to live in it, despite the fact that it is slowly becoming uninhabitable. I think sometimes the tendency with these dystopian settings is to Provide Commentary on a disaster, to explain it by pointing to any number of factors (Capitalism, Technology, Oligarchy, etc.), but it can be so much harder to just have your characters live in it, to suffer its daily degradations and deprivations--to experience, day by day, the gradual worsening of an already bad situation, and to have to live through it anyway, because what other choice is there? Despite everything, there is still an everyday to be gotten through: groceries, jobs, commutes, meals, family. (Though--and the novel is very aware of this--the characters are very privileged to even have this semblance of an everyday life.)
But as much as Private Rites is a climate disaster novel, it's also very much a family drama novel. We have three sisters--Isla, Irene, and Agnes--and an abusive father who, we find out on page one, has just died. From there, the sisters are forced to come together and reckon with how their father's abuse has affected--and continues to affect--not just their own selves, but also their fraught relationships with each other. There are, of course, the material realities of the novel's climate disaster, but I think water is, in a way, also an apt motif for a book whose characters have absorbed these ways of being from their childhoods--been steeped in that abuse such that now, as adults, its traumatic aftereffects seep into their adult lives and relationships. And seep they do: Armfield doesn't give us any big flashbacks to illuminate this past, but rather flashes of memory that constantly intrude on the sisters when they're alone and together. We don't get the full picture, but we get bits and pieces of it, and the effect is all the more powerful for this restraint.
Climate disaster + childhood trauma--Private Rites seems maybe like an unrelentingly bleak novel, but it's really not. It's not an upbeat novel by any means, but despite the bleak circumstances, it never feels one-note. The characters are fleshed out, shown to us in both their worst and most vulnerable moments; and even as the novel's climate disaster rages on, its characters still manage to have faith, even if just a little, in something--be it a person, a relationship, an act, a belief.
Private Rites is definitely (and unexpectedly) one of my favourite reads of the year, and such a different novel from Armfield's debut: longer, more ambitious, and, I think, ultimately more satisfying.
(thank you to 4th estate for the eARC!)
Want to read
June 12, 2024
June 13, 2024
I adore Julia Armfield’s writing style and her writing was just as incredible in Private Rites. I enjoyed the reading experience and spending time with the characters, and I loved the ending. It has stuck with me.
However, I do feel the blurb miss-sells the book to be something a bit different to what it is. The unsettling vibes that Julia Armfield is an absolute master of, don’t really come into play until towards the end of the book and I was really hoping more of that would seep in throughout the entire story.
I would still 100% recommend Private Rites but just don’t expect the same vibe as our wives under the sea.
May 20, 2024
2.5. 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.
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.
June 3, 2024
this was so no plot just vibes until the last like ??? CHAPTER ??? and then it was like surprise there was a secret plot and also this is an a24 film actually
April 23, 2024
Julia delivers once again!! With Private Rites, Julia explores the relationship between three sisters in a world ravaged by a climate catastrophe where it has rained for so long that some places have been lost and cities have retreated to higher storeys. The three estranged sisters are forced back together after their father died, reuniting to clear his grand glass house.
Once again, LOVED Julia’s use of water. In Private Rites it is literally pouring from the sky and it’s fascinating to learn about how society has learned to adjust to this new way of life. Her prose is beautiful as always, with such stunning descriptions and reflections on relationships, not only between the three sisters, but the relationships with others in their life.
I didn’t love it as much as Our Wives Under the Sea, mainly because the ending felt a little misplaced for me, but I might enjoy it more on a reread placing it into context. And now the wait begins for another Armfield…
Thank you to @4thestatebooks for the eARC!
4.5/5.
Once again, LOVED Julia’s use of water. In Private Rites it is literally pouring from the sky and it’s fascinating to learn about how society has learned to adjust to this new way of life. Her prose is beautiful as always, with such stunning descriptions and reflections on relationships, not only between the three sisters, but the relationships with others in their life.
I didn’t love it as much as Our Wives Under the Sea, mainly because the ending felt a little misplaced for me, but I might enjoy it more on a reread placing it into context. And now the wait begins for another Armfield…
Thank you to @4thestatebooks for the eARC!
4.5/5.
June 13, 2024
Dysfunctional sibling relationships residing in the messy liminal space of hate and love.
I loved Our Wives Under the Sea by this author so maybe my expectations for this new book of hers was too high, but anyways, Private Rites follows three sisters in the panopticon of an eroding, dystopian-esque environment. Society and the climate is at the precipice of decay, though most of its denizens seem to be in denial. The sisters have a stale relationship which has to be awkwardly confronted after their father’s death, bringing them to his house (which emanates unease). Familial dysfunction and navigating the dynamic complexity of relationships is at the forefront of this novel.
There’s a sense of urgency about the climate and the restless discomfort of capitalist existence that the melancholic, melodious fervour of Armfield’s writing reflects really well. There was depth in the sisters’ interactions, but the sisters individually didn’t feel well-rounded to me in their POVs.
The story lacked forward momentum for me, because I was somehow bereft of the desire to unveil the layers of this dysfunctional familial dynamic even though that should have been intriguing in theory. The themes around sisterhood and maladjusted families are not ones I personally care for, so those who love exploring complex family dynamics in its entire messy breadth would probably have a blast with this.
The pacing was somewhat uneven with buildup to the ending that seemed staccato, which felt like a wall between my ability to feel fully immersed in the rhythm of Armfield’s writing.
So this was a miss for me, but I’d happily recommend this to those who love exploring messy family dynamics (particularly those between siblings), well-rounded queer representation, and eerie atmospheres that have a sense of malaise.
Rating: 2 stars
I loved Our Wives Under the Sea by this author so maybe my expectations for this new book of hers was too high, but anyways, Private Rites follows three sisters in the panopticon of an eroding, dystopian-esque environment. Society and the climate is at the precipice of decay, though most of its denizens seem to be in denial. The sisters have a stale relationship which has to be awkwardly confronted after their father’s death, bringing them to his house (which emanates unease). Familial dysfunction and navigating the dynamic complexity of relationships is at the forefront of this novel.
There’s a sense of urgency about the climate and the restless discomfort of capitalist existence that the melancholic, melodious fervour of Armfield’s writing reflects really well. There was depth in the sisters’ interactions, but the sisters individually didn’t feel well-rounded to me in their POVs.
The story lacked forward momentum for me, because I was somehow bereft of the desire to unveil the layers of this dysfunctional familial dynamic even though that should have been intriguing in theory. The themes around sisterhood and maladjusted families are not ones I personally care for, so those who love exploring complex family dynamics in its entire messy breadth would probably have a blast with this.
The pacing was somewhat uneven with buildup to the ending that seemed staccato, which felt like a wall between my ability to feel fully immersed in the rhythm of Armfield’s writing.
So this was a miss for me, but I’d happily recommend this to those who love exploring messy family dynamics (particularly those between siblings), well-rounded queer representation, and eerie atmospheres that have a sense of malaise.
Rating: 2 stars
June 20, 2024
stunning. chilling. brutal. tender.
julia armfield is doing it like no one else is.
julia armfield is doing it like no one else is.
June 28, 2024
I was so engrossed in the story of Private Rites that I read it in under 24 hours, barely pausing for breaks. I adored every single aspect of this book, and it pretty much immediately became a new favourite as soon as I finished! Although it is set against the backdrop of a climate catastrophe signalling the end of the world, the apocalyptic setting is diminished, becoming a mundane triviality rather than a disaster of utmost urgency, which I found to be a highly intriguing and unique twist on the dystopian and speculative genres. Instead, the conflict between the characters, three sisters navigating the death of their father amid a slow burning crisis, takes centre stage, and I utterly adored the explorations of grief, as well as the themes of queerness and desire that are interwoven throughout the narrative in such a detailed and nuanced way. Armfield excels at creating a melancholic tone through her vivid descriptions of the endless rain seeping through and pervading every aspect of life, conjuring an atmosphere of quiet but unsettling tragedy. Furthermore, I found her depictions of everyday life fascinating as, with the central three characters dealing with relationships colleagues, flatmates and family at work and home, she presents a world that, despite the vastly different situations, is not so different from our own.
I would highly recommend this book, and I would be very keen to read anything Julia Armfield writes in the future.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the early review copy!
I would highly recommend this book, and I would be very keen to read anything Julia Armfield writes in the future.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the early review copy!
June 23, 2024
*edited with review*
3.75.
Hmmm, this one’s quite a complicated one! I absolutely, as I expected, loved the writing, I’ve tabbed up my copy completely. This did not disappoint and was a lot like Our Wives with its beautiful prose.
I loved that the impending apocalypse was unique and not the forefront of this story, it made it all the more interesting of a concept for me. The sibling dynamics were well explored, I am an only child so can only assume it’s written accurately😅. My favourite sibling was, of course, Agnes! I loved her development.
The City having its own perspective really added to the story, having short sentences about others living through this apocalypse and their ways of coping made it feel all the more authentic.
The thing that made it feel not as strong as Our Wives for me personally was the pacing, half way in and the story hadn’t developed too much since the beginning. This is all well and good when you can write like Armfield can of course so i continued on. The ending… it came out of left field and really really confused me, I am just going to kind of… pretend it didn’t happen? Regardless this book is still a 4 star rounded up for me because the writing was amazing and I had a good time. Looking forward to future works!
*added 7 months previous to my review*.
Give us another beautiful book cover Julia 🙏🏼
3.75.
Hmmm, this one’s quite a complicated one! I absolutely, as I expected, loved the writing, I’ve tabbed up my copy completely. This did not disappoint and was a lot like Our Wives with its beautiful prose.
I loved that the impending apocalypse was unique and not the forefront of this story, it made it all the more interesting of a concept for me. The sibling dynamics were well explored, I am an only child so can only assume it’s written accurately😅. My favourite sibling was, of course, Agnes! I loved her development.
The City having its own perspective really added to the story, having short sentences about others living through this apocalypse and their ways of coping made it feel all the more authentic.
The thing that made it feel not as strong as Our Wives for me personally was the pacing, half way in and the story hadn’t developed too much since the beginning. This is all well and good when you can write like Armfield can of course so i continued on. The ending… it came out of left field and really really confused me, I am just going to kind of… pretend it didn’t happen? Regardless this book is still a 4 star rounded up for me because the writing was amazing and I had a good time. Looking forward to future works!
*added 7 months previous to my review*.
Give us another beautiful book cover Julia 🙏🏼
April 18, 2024
5 million stars PHENOMENAL
May 13, 2024
4.5/5
PRIVATE RITES is Julia Armfield's exploration of the end of the world lived in the mundane; Armfield's apocalypse if very much not a bang, but a whimper, a pot left simmering as you remain unsure of when it'll come to a boil. She interrogates the limits of what people will get used to, and put up with, and the way The End Of Days™ can come across as a series of end of days as we knew them. A series of changes of circumstances, of quiet tragedies that ring all too familiar to the now, and so the reader can easily see them transposed onto the slightly dystopian scene without needing any significant suspension of disbelief on their part. There are sequences that ring particularly true in the wake of a post 2020 world, so much so that they had me reread them to myself time and time again in a quick succession, then reading them out loud to my friend as we waited to board our plane. The brief interlude chapters from the city breaking up our three protagonists' POVs are lyrical and fuzzy in a late-night dreamlike kind of way.
When it comes to the three characters, I found it difficult to pick favourites, and found myself swayed each time we met or came back to another sisters' perspective. Where Armfield excels in many ways is in her deep understanding of and compassion for the human experience; her ability to dig to the heart and guts of things, and deliver characters that are messy, and honest (or as honest to you as they are to themselves) and raw. The honesty of each character rang true to my bones. I knew these women. If I looked just right, I could see facets of myself reflected in these women. It is this tender, yet brutal authenticity that makes it so easy to dive fully into their stories, to believe each of their thought processes, to live each of their quiet devastations with them, to spiral or float alongside depending on the tide.
It's not often that a reader is willing to abandon questions of action, plot or world (especially with a book that invites so many) in favour of merely following along with the characters and sinking into the whirlpool of their thoughts, but it takes little effort to do so with PRIVATE RITES. If possible, I think this'd make for a stellar reading experience if consumed in one go, yet it loses none of its appeal or bite when read in small chunks of time stolen here and there as was my case. I'm already dying to get a physical copies into my hands and annotate it to no end.
PRIVATE RITES is Julia Armfield's exploration of the end of the world lived in the mundane; Armfield's apocalypse if very much not a bang, but a whimper, a pot left simmering as you remain unsure of when it'll come to a boil. She interrogates the limits of what people will get used to, and put up with, and the way The End Of Days™ can come across as a series of end of days as we knew them. A series of changes of circumstances, of quiet tragedies that ring all too familiar to the now, and so the reader can easily see them transposed onto the slightly dystopian scene without needing any significant suspension of disbelief on their part. There are sequences that ring particularly true in the wake of a post 2020 world, so much so that they had me reread them to myself time and time again in a quick succession, then reading them out loud to my friend as we waited to board our plane. The brief interlude chapters from the city breaking up our three protagonists' POVs are lyrical and fuzzy in a late-night dreamlike kind of way.
When it comes to the three characters, I found it difficult to pick favourites, and found myself swayed each time we met or came back to another sisters' perspective. Where Armfield excels in many ways is in her deep understanding of and compassion for the human experience; her ability to dig to the heart and guts of things, and deliver characters that are messy, and honest (or as honest to you as they are to themselves) and raw. The honesty of each character rang true to my bones. I knew these women. If I looked just right, I could see facets of myself reflected in these women. It is this tender, yet brutal authenticity that makes it so easy to dive fully into their stories, to believe each of their thought processes, to live each of their quiet devastations with them, to spiral or float alongside depending on the tide.
It's not often that a reader is willing to abandon questions of action, plot or world (especially with a book that invites so many) in favour of merely following along with the characters and sinking into the whirlpool of their thoughts, but it takes little effort to do so with PRIVATE RITES. If possible, I think this'd make for a stellar reading experience if consumed in one go, yet it loses none of its appeal or bite when read in small chunks of time stolen here and there as was my case. I'm already dying to get a physical copies into my hands and annotate it to no end.
June 24, 2024
“Any horror story could be said to work in two pieces: the fear of being wholly alone and of realizing that one has company.“
julia armfield has DONE IT AGAIN!
i’m sure that no one is surprised that i loved, cherished, and devoured julia armfield’s third novel, PRIVATE RITES. i’ve been vocal about my love for OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA and SALT SLOW since i read them both a while back, and when an advanced copy of PRIVATE RITES arrived on my doorstep i dropped everything to pick it up.
this queer King Lear retelling is a slow, obliterating wave. following three sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes (self-described as “King Lear’s dyke daughters”) in the wake of their father’s death, the novel explores their relationships as siblings, partners, and children in the wake of a quickly dissolving world drowning under the weight of never ending rain. the women are flawed and mean and selfish. they’re loving and careful and pensive. they’re cruel and soft when it matters, and they’re sisters even when the word seems to mean nothing.
armfield’s gorgeous prose fed me until i was full of it (just as it always does!) and left me wanting to sleep with the book beneath my pillow in hopes of taking it some of it’s beauty. there are many horrors in PRIVATES RITES—ecological and familial and spectral—but there is also love on every page, even when it comes with hurt. i loved it just as much as i hoped i would, and i’ll be chewing on that ending for years to come!
thank you so much to Flatiron Books for the gifted copy!
julia armfield has DONE IT AGAIN!
i’m sure that no one is surprised that i loved, cherished, and devoured julia armfield’s third novel, PRIVATE RITES. i’ve been vocal about my love for OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA and SALT SLOW since i read them both a while back, and when an advanced copy of PRIVATE RITES arrived on my doorstep i dropped everything to pick it up.
this queer King Lear retelling is a slow, obliterating wave. following three sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes (self-described as “King Lear’s dyke daughters”) in the wake of their father’s death, the novel explores their relationships as siblings, partners, and children in the wake of a quickly dissolving world drowning under the weight of never ending rain. the women are flawed and mean and selfish. they’re loving and careful and pensive. they’re cruel and soft when it matters, and they’re sisters even when the word seems to mean nothing.
armfield’s gorgeous prose fed me until i was full of it (just as it always does!) and left me wanting to sleep with the book beneath my pillow in hopes of taking it some of it’s beauty. there are many horrors in PRIVATES RITES—ecological and familial and spectral—but there is also love on every page, even when it comes with hurt. i loved it just as much as i hoped i would, and i’ll be chewing on that ending for years to come!
thank you so much to Flatiron Books for the gifted copy!
July 15, 2024
Well, this was definitely not as great as Our Wives Under the Sea. To be fair, I really loved Julia Armfield's previous novel. So much so that when I saw this as an ARC, I checked my email constantly to see if I got it or not.
Armfield clearly loves water to a degree that I didn't think was possible. This novel follows the strained relationship of three sisters dealing with the death of their wealthy father during a dystopian future where it never stops raining. The chapters go back and forth between sisters and what is happening in the flooded city. I've never read about a future where water is ever present, so this was a nice change of pace.
Private Rites is classified as horror. Horror seems like a bit of a stretch. It was a bit spooky, especially if you, like me, are sadly moving through life with the looming threat of climate change ever present (113 degrees in California tomorrow).
Having multiple character point of views is a little jolting at times, but it does allow for some nice character development. I love how all sisters were in queer relationships - like, yes, thank you for this. As mentioned in the book, there are several families where all siblings are hetero and no one bats an eye. However, I do NOT appreciate the amount of times I read the word "tits" - it's one of the few words I loathe. It's my "moist".
All in all, I liked this. I had a good time. It just wasn't as beautifully done as her previous work. Thank you NetGalley and Fourth Estate for the ARC!
Armfield clearly loves water to a degree that I didn't think was possible. This novel follows the strained relationship of three sisters dealing with the death of their wealthy father during a dystopian future where it never stops raining. The chapters go back and forth between sisters and what is happening in the flooded city. I've never read about a future where water is ever present, so this was a nice change of pace.
Private Rites is classified as horror. Horror seems like a bit of a stretch. It was a bit spooky, especially if you, like me, are sadly moving through life with the looming threat of climate change ever present (113 degrees in California tomorrow).
Having multiple character point of views is a little jolting at times, but it does allow for some nice character development. I love how all sisters were in queer relationships - like, yes, thank you for this. As mentioned in the book, there are several families where all siblings are hetero and no one bats an eye. However, I do NOT appreciate the amount of times I read the word "tits" - it's one of the few words I loathe. It's my "moist".
All in all, I liked this. I had a good time. It just wasn't as beautifully done as her previous work. Thank you NetGalley and Fourth Estate for the ARC!
Shelved as 'on-hold'
June 18, 2024i'm going to put this to the side for now... i want to like armfield's work, her use of motifs, repetition, and her ability to create a certain opaque ambience appeal to me. but i often find her language affected and her characterisation predictable. her attempts at bluntness also don't really work for me as they seem rather edgy. my friends here on GR loved it so i recommend you check out more positive reviews as i'm very much an outlier.
May 9, 2024
It’s hard to remember another book that the literary fic and horror side of the bookish community have waited with such bated breath for. Private Rites is the second novel from the author of the divisive deep sea horror, Our Wives Under the Sea. We all know that second books can be a bit of a stumbling block for authors, it almost seems like it’s harder to have success with them than with a debut, but I think this one is going to be received the same way as her first – it’s going to divide opinions.
Private Rites is both similar and very different to Our Wives. Both books are damp and soggy. Both books deeply explore human relationships and the complexities around them. And both books have a certain level of ambiguity to them. However, I felt that the vibes, overall, were quite different. The story is far more in-depth, slower, and much less unsettling than I was expecting. It took me a while longer to get into Private Rites than it did Our Wives and that’s because I think the synopsis given to this book lines you up to expect a certain kind of story and a certain kind of tone that never really comes into fruition.
I had to readjust my expectations of this book several times throughout because the plot and the synopsis were very different AND it also didn’t feel like the kind of literary horror book I was expecting based on what Our Wives was like. I don't want this to sound like I'm being completely negative about this book because I did enjoy it, but it’s definitely worth mentioning to not go into this one expecting it to be the same kind of book as her previous one. Despite the similarities, I do think this is going to be a book where people who didn’t love Our Wives are more likely going to enjoy this, and those of us who loved Our Wives are going to be a little disappointed by this one, if we go into based on what the book tells us it’s about. But if you did love Our Wives, you have much more chance of loving this one knowing that you’re getting a different kind of book, and a story that doesn’t closely follow what the synopsis said. Despite the fact that I did like this book, I kind of wish I had known that beforehand so my expectation weren’t so astronomically different to what I read.
Right that’s all the semi-complaining I’m going to do, just thought it was really important to get that point across early on in this review as I know so many people are highly anticipating this and it feels really important to make sure people know what they're getting into before they read it. Now, let’s get into everything that was great about this book.
This is the kind of book that feels like being stuck in rain-soaked clothes – claustrophobic, uncomfortable and cold. And that’s not just because this book is about a terrifyingly plausible near future where it never stops raining, but there’s also moments throughout, especially as you get closer to the end where the vibe feels very clammy, tense & edgy. Overall this book felt a lot more literary fiction than it did literary horror but the scarier or more unsettling elements of this book come from that fact that it’s quietly apocalyptic. The world has managed to readjust itself enough to deal with what essentially feels like the end of the world and so that's just going on in the background as people exist as normally as possible in their everyday lives, going to work, going out clubbing, meeting up with friends and starting new relationships. But as the story gets further and further in, the terror of existing in this time and place begins to grow and become more apparent, and I’d be lying to you if I said that the prospect of this future, that feels so incredibly plausible considering the way climate change is so rapidly making itself known at the moment, didn't scare me a bit.
Julia Armfield’s writing is, of course, impeccable. If you are someone who enjoys annotating books and pulling out quotes, you were going to have such a field day with this one. She manages to put certain things so perfectly into words that often times throughout I had that realisation of the fact I had never been able to put that thing or feeling into words but she had done it so perfectly, I knew exactly what she was talking about and those moments feel so good.
Where Armfield truly shines is in her exploration of relationships, whether that be a siblings or romantic, and of people. She’s able to dive so deeply into these pull out the good and the bad. She’s able to highlight the complexities of relationships and people in a completely honest and relatable way. I love how she is so good at giving characters nuance and presenting them as ultimately flawed and at times not great people but without ever making them dislikable, and that's something that's done really well in this book because we follow the three sisters who have a very strained relationship, who all do unlikable things but at no point did I dislike any of them. Armfield gives them room to be complicated and messy and gives us room to recognise how their past and their traumas influenced who they had become and despite these less desirable aspects to them that we see, it’s also clear that they are all ultimately good people and doing their best, not only during a time where the world is ending but also in their relationship as sisters that was almost set up in a way that was doomed to fail from the start.
I feel like Private Rites is a book where the further away I get from reading it the more I realise how much I loved it, but at the moment my feelings towards it are definitely skewed by the expectations I had of it. Ultimately I enjoyed this book, and I do recommend it. I think if you go into it looking forward to a beautifully written mundane apocalypse novel with an incredible exploration of sister relationships and complicated family pasts, then you won't be disappointed.
Private Rites is both similar and very different to Our Wives. Both books are damp and soggy. Both books deeply explore human relationships and the complexities around them. And both books have a certain level of ambiguity to them. However, I felt that the vibes, overall, were quite different. The story is far more in-depth, slower, and much less unsettling than I was expecting. It took me a while longer to get into Private Rites than it did Our Wives and that’s because I think the synopsis given to this book lines you up to expect a certain kind of story and a certain kind of tone that never really comes into fruition.
I had to readjust my expectations of this book several times throughout because the plot and the synopsis were very different AND it also didn’t feel like the kind of literary horror book I was expecting based on what Our Wives was like. I don't want this to sound like I'm being completely negative about this book because I did enjoy it, but it’s definitely worth mentioning to not go into this one expecting it to be the same kind of book as her previous one. Despite the similarities, I do think this is going to be a book where people who didn’t love Our Wives are more likely going to enjoy this, and those of us who loved Our Wives are going to be a little disappointed by this one, if we go into based on what the book tells us it’s about. But if you did love Our Wives, you have much more chance of loving this one knowing that you’re getting a different kind of book, and a story that doesn’t closely follow what the synopsis said. Despite the fact that I did like this book, I kind of wish I had known that beforehand so my expectation weren’t so astronomically different to what I read.
Right that’s all the semi-complaining I’m going to do, just thought it was really important to get that point across early on in this review as I know so many people are highly anticipating this and it feels really important to make sure people know what they're getting into before they read it. Now, let’s get into everything that was great about this book.
This is the kind of book that feels like being stuck in rain-soaked clothes – claustrophobic, uncomfortable and cold. And that’s not just because this book is about a terrifyingly plausible near future where it never stops raining, but there’s also moments throughout, especially as you get closer to the end where the vibe feels very clammy, tense & edgy. Overall this book felt a lot more literary fiction than it did literary horror but the scarier or more unsettling elements of this book come from that fact that it’s quietly apocalyptic. The world has managed to readjust itself enough to deal with what essentially feels like the end of the world and so that's just going on in the background as people exist as normally as possible in their everyday lives, going to work, going out clubbing, meeting up with friends and starting new relationships. But as the story gets further and further in, the terror of existing in this time and place begins to grow and become more apparent, and I’d be lying to you if I said that the prospect of this future, that feels so incredibly plausible considering the way climate change is so rapidly making itself known at the moment, didn't scare me a bit.
Julia Armfield’s writing is, of course, impeccable. If you are someone who enjoys annotating books and pulling out quotes, you were going to have such a field day with this one. She manages to put certain things so perfectly into words that often times throughout I had that realisation of the fact I had never been able to put that thing or feeling into words but she had done it so perfectly, I knew exactly what she was talking about and those moments feel so good.
Where Armfield truly shines is in her exploration of relationships, whether that be a siblings or romantic, and of people. She’s able to dive so deeply into these pull out the good and the bad. She’s able to highlight the complexities of relationships and people in a completely honest and relatable way. I love how she is so good at giving characters nuance and presenting them as ultimately flawed and at times not great people but without ever making them dislikable, and that's something that's done really well in this book because we follow the three sisters who have a very strained relationship, who all do unlikable things but at no point did I dislike any of them. Armfield gives them room to be complicated and messy and gives us room to recognise how their past and their traumas influenced who they had become and despite these less desirable aspects to them that we see, it’s also clear that they are all ultimately good people and doing their best, not only during a time where the world is ending but also in their relationship as sisters that was almost set up in a way that was doomed to fail from the start.
I feel like Private Rites is a book where the further away I get from reading it the more I realise how much I loved it, but at the moment my feelings towards it are definitely skewed by the expectations I had of it. Ultimately I enjoyed this book, and I do recommend it. I think if you go into it looking forward to a beautifully written mundane apocalypse novel with an incredible exploration of sister relationships and complicated family pasts, then you won't be disappointed.
June 15, 2024
Julia, you've done it again. 5/5 stars... Standing ovation.
Full review to come once my brain has become unscrambled.
Full review to come once my brain has become unscrambled.
July 7, 2024
I raced through this sitting in our campervan in Sweden in the pouring rain, and it almost felt as if I was living in Armfield’s end of the world realm. Like in ‘Our Wives under the Sea’ there’s loads of water here; high water, floods and endless rain, caused by climate change. There’s queer love here again as well. And some dystopian horror elements that give the book once again just a bit of extra thrill. A frightful book about sisterhood and love set in an apocalyptic world.
Thank you Fourth Estate and Netgalley UK for the ARC.
Thank you Fourth Estate and Netgalley UK for the ARC.
July 3, 2024
A King Lear retelling with three sisters, the end of the world, and a watery dystopia.
Isla, Irene, and Agnes are three sisters who are estranged, brought together where their father dies, famous for being an architect for making the new world navigable.
A world being submerged by water as it never stops raining.
The environment and the end of the world isn’t the focus (which seems crazy with such a cool premise), rather the relationships between the three queer, volatile sisters. They find themselves uncertain of how to grieve their father when everything around them seems to be ending anyway.
Not to mention, they all seem to have either mummy or daddy issues and an undercurrent of competitiveness, miscommunication, and pettiness brought forward from childhood.
Isla…. tried to remember the sequence of a poem she’d wanted to quote to a patient earlier in the week, about Old Masters and 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."
I am an older sister with two younger brothers and the snapping and automatic japes had me examining my own relationship with my brothers, seeing my own interactions in the siblings.
The two oldest, Isla and Irene, try to come together, only to slip into habitual competitiveness. On the other hand, Agnes is the youngest by eleven years and this age gap is keenly felt and hard to breach.
”It is,” Isla finds, “just so easy to allow herself the fun of resenting Agnes, as easy as it was when they were kids.”
I would have loved more on the rainy city, where people live makeshift lives on the top floors of flooded tower blocks, travelling by ferry. Yet, I know this isn’t Armfield’s purpose.
Just like Our Wives under the Sea, this is a slow moving, intimate look at our connections with those closest to us. The push and pull.
The first half was definitely better than the second half. Then it just felt repetitive and self-indulgent in pity, shame, revulsion, and frustration.
Maybe if you like books like My Year of Rest and Relaxation, you might enjoy it more.
And the ending was just such a let down. I think I kind of expected it, but it felt like a cheat, a cop out.
Again, this is written for certain people and I kind of guessed before even picking it up it wouldn’t be me.
Bookstagram
Isla, Irene, and Agnes are three sisters who are estranged, brought together where their father dies, famous for being an architect for making the new world navigable.
A world being submerged by water as it never stops raining.
The environment and the end of the world isn’t the focus (which seems crazy with such a cool premise), rather the relationships between the three queer, volatile sisters. They find themselves uncertain of how to grieve their father when everything around them seems to be ending anyway.
Not to mention, they all seem to have either mummy or daddy issues and an undercurrent of competitiveness, miscommunication, and pettiness brought forward from childhood.
Isla…. tried to remember the sequence of a poem she’d wanted to quote to a patient earlier in the week, about Old Masters and 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."
I am an older sister with two younger brothers and the snapping and automatic japes had me examining my own relationship with my brothers, seeing my own interactions in the siblings.
The two oldest, Isla and Irene, try to come together, only to slip into habitual competitiveness. On the other hand, Agnes is the youngest by eleven years and this age gap is keenly felt and hard to breach.
”It is,” Isla finds, “just so easy to allow herself the fun of resenting Agnes, as easy as it was when they were kids.”
I would have loved more on the rainy city, where people live makeshift lives on the top floors of flooded tower blocks, travelling by ferry. Yet, I know this isn’t Armfield’s purpose.
Just like Our Wives under the Sea, this is a slow moving, intimate look at our connections with those closest to us. The push and pull.
The first half was definitely better than the second half. Then it just felt repetitive and self-indulgent in pity, shame, revulsion, and frustration.
Maybe if you like books like My Year of Rest and Relaxation, you might enjoy it more.
And the ending was just such a let down. I think I kind of expected it, but it felt like a cheat, a cop out.
Again, this is written for certain people and I kind of guessed before even picking it up it wouldn’t be me.
Bookstagram
July 10, 2024
I didn’t like this as much as I wanted but I thought the writing was absolutely exquisite. This book is very much a character driven novel which centres on three sisters and what happens to them when their father dies. It is set against the backdrop of the looming apocalypse where the world is being quickly flooded and whole towns washed away.
I knew this was going to be a very muted book but I wasn’t prepared for how muted it was. I was hoping for something a little more sinister and for a tiny bit more of the horror we got from Our Wives, even if it wasn’t completely up for that level. It felt like although the climate crisis and apocalypse stuff was mentioned it was never used in a way to create an atmosphere. You could definitely have created a eeriness with the background knowledge of the end of the world with it still being very subtle, but I didn’t feel like it was put to use the best it could’ve been. Maybe this worked for some people but for me I felt as though the subtlety was way too much and wasn’t used to create any urgency or uncanniness.
I loved the queer aspects and relationships in the book. My favourite character was Agnes and I found myself drawn to her parts a lot more. But again this book is very slow moving and I found with no sense of panic to latch on to it became quite waning at points.
Armfield’s writing is unmatched and I still think this was a great book, I just didn’t love it as much as her previous novel which blew my mind. I’m super excited to see what she writes next.
I knew this was going to be a very muted book but I wasn’t prepared for how muted it was. I was hoping for something a little more sinister and for a tiny bit more of the horror we got from Our Wives, even if it wasn’t completely up for that level. It felt like although the climate crisis and apocalypse stuff was mentioned it was never used in a way to create an atmosphere. You could definitely have created a eeriness with the background knowledge of the end of the world with it still being very subtle, but I didn’t feel like it was put to use the best it could’ve been. Maybe this worked for some people but for me I felt as though the subtlety was way too much and wasn’t used to create any urgency or uncanniness.
I loved the queer aspects and relationships in the book. My favourite character was Agnes and I found myself drawn to her parts a lot more. But again this book is very slow moving and I found with no sense of panic to latch on to it became quite waning at points.
Armfield’s writing is unmatched and I still think this was a great book, I just didn’t love it as much as her previous novel which blew my mind. I’m super excited to see what she writes next.
July 8, 2024
If you're wondering, yes, I did spend the entire book telling myself 'Surely this is not horror, right?' I did ignore all the warning signs whilst still thinking this story reminded me of Midsommar and The Haunting of Hill House. It's me, I'm the fool. Will I ever emotionally recover from that ending? Who's to say. (4.18)
May 23, 2024
Quite a few words come to mind in response to Julia Armfield’s writing; riveting, haunting, mesmerizing and they still seem to pale in comparison while reading.
Armfield is a master of mixing techniques and pulls from so many genres that it tends to transcend all need for categorization. She blends literary fiction with horror, fantasy, science fiction, mythology and never falls into ruining the individual aspects of each that makes them special. It is rare to find an authour who is able to walk this tight rope as elegantly as Armfield, that going into every new book feels like a journey I cannot wait to unfold and Private Rites is no exception.
Taking place in a world going through a mediocre apocalypse starring three sisters grappling with their father’s death and their upbringing. It doesn’t sound like the most thrilling premise and yet Armfield haunts and explores in every possible direction with three very different women. This is no ghost story and yet she is able to grasp the same sort of tension and yearning that is pervasive and necessary in gothic tales.
My most minor critique is that I wish Private Rites felt a bit more like Our Wives Under the Sea in the way reading felt like a wave. Private Rites is less of a riptide as it is a slowly rising rollercoaster that has a single fall at the end. And yet, that’s artistic impressions for you, and is not a bad thing by any means but purely a different experience in reading
Armfield is a master of mixing techniques and pulls from so many genres that it tends to transcend all need for categorization. She blends literary fiction with horror, fantasy, science fiction, mythology and never falls into ruining the individual aspects of each that makes them special. It is rare to find an authour who is able to walk this tight rope as elegantly as Armfield, that going into every new book feels like a journey I cannot wait to unfold and Private Rites is no exception.
Taking place in a world going through a mediocre apocalypse starring three sisters grappling with their father’s death and their upbringing. It doesn’t sound like the most thrilling premise and yet Armfield haunts and explores in every possible direction with three very different women. This is no ghost story and yet she is able to grasp the same sort of tension and yearning that is pervasive and necessary in gothic tales.
My most minor critique is that I wish Private Rites felt a bit more like Our Wives Under the Sea in the way reading felt like a wave. Private Rites is less of a riptide as it is a slowly rising rollercoaster that has a single fall at the end. And yet, that’s artistic impressions for you, and is not a bad thing by any means but purely a different experience in reading
Displaying 1 - 30 of 424 reviews