Private Rites
Page turning
Awe-inspiring
Tragic

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.
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Reviews

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p.@softrosemint
3.5 stars
Mar 27, 2025

I absolutely loved the way the (post-)apocalyptic slowly creeps onto you as you are deeply engaged in the lives of each of the sisters. Armfield is absolutely in her ability here to build up suspence and a sense of dread and impending doom. The setting of the novel feels almost tangible - so incredible is the atmosphere, it affects all of the sense of the reader.

"Private Rites" is such a quick read, too - it almost feels like an exploration of an idea over anything else.

As personal bias, I also really enjoyed the architectural ideas worked into the novel.

Photo of Clara Gauthier
Clara Gauthier@cegauthier
5 stars
Feb 7, 2025

julia armfield. holy shit dude. finished this book and had to sit and cry on my kitchen floor. one of my fav king lear adaptions yet. an exploration into the idea of reality during a slow apocalypse, combined with incredibly compelling sister relationships. everything ties together So Well at the end, and i fear i will be thinking about this book forever.

+3
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Laurel S.@palefire
3 stars
Feb 7, 2025
Photo of Elizabeth Scott
Elizabeth Scott@amos222
3 stars
Feb 3, 2025
Photo of Leila
Leila@emailme
3.5 stars
Jan 26, 2025
+4
Photo of Sage McParland
Sage McParland@sagemcp
4 stars
Oct 19, 2024
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Imogen west@imogen1005
5 stars
Sep 10, 2024
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bug@bugspray
5 stars
Jun 18, 2024
Photo of Victoria Justice
Victoria Justice@litatori
4.5 stars
Mar 14, 2024

Highlights

Photo of Clara Gauthier
Clara Gauthier@cegauthier

Life, she understands, is a collapsing down, a succession of memories held not in sequence but together, occurring and recurring all at once. She's in her father's kitchen at the age of twenty-four, but so is she at age five, age nine, age eleven. She is standing where she is with her sisters and her father is here, and yet he isn't.

Page 273
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Clara Gauthier@cegauthier

People do what they have always done, in the knowledge that choice is limited.

Page 265
Photo of Clara Gauthier
Clara Gauthier@cegauthier

…sometimes she pictured her mother spreading across her like lichen, like something resembling skin.

Page 256
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Clara Gauthier@cegauthier

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

Page 158
Photo of Clara Gauthier
Clara Gauthier@cegauthier

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?

Page 144
Photo of Clara Gauthier
Clara Gauthier@cegauthier

“Oh, Jesus Christ," Isla hisses, slapping a palm down on the table in annoyance, "don't you ever get tired of going on like this?"

Irene sits back in her chair. Only you make me like this, she wants to say. You think I'm like this and that makes me worse.

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