Julia Armfield

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.

Private Rites

Clara Gauthier

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. 

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

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

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

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?

“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.

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.

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.

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. 

Julia Armfield portrays sisterhood in such a nuanced, tugging way that I almost feel unprepared and unworthy reading this novel due to my affliction of being an only child.

portrays a maelstrom of grief, melancholy, resentment and, at times, betrayal, as three Sapphic sisters deal with the death of their pretty shitty father, and the subsequent bequeathing of his properties.

Armfield is a talented writer, and using the backdrop of a, clearly untenable, waterlogged world as a macrocosm of the figurative emotional drowning and eventual collapse of her characters is inspired.

swan

Julia Armfield portrays sisterhood in such a nuanced, tugging way that I almost feel unprepared and unworthy reading this novel due to my affliction of being an only child.

Holding echoes of King Lear, Private Rites portrays a maelstrom of grief, melancholy, resentment and, at times, betrayal, as three Sapphic sisters deal with the death of their pretty shitty father, and the subsequent bequeathing of his properties.

Armfield is a talented writer, and using the backdrop of a, clearly untenable, waterlogged world as a macrocosm of the figurative emotional drowning and eventual collapse of her characters is inspired.

Laurel S.

Elizabeth Scott

From the award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world

It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.

More estranged than ever, the sisters’ lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams; Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling; and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters’ 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 imperiled world.

Private Rites

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