I was absolutely thrilled to be approved for this so thank you to NetGalley and the publisher!

I love Julia Armfield and I knew I would read and love whatever she wrote next.

Private Rites is a very loose King Lear adaption with 3 sisters dealing with the death of their architect father.

But it takes place in a not-too-distant future where most of the world is covered in water and their father designed houses for the rich to survive the flooding.

Julia Armfield loves watery descriptions and it was the perfect setting for her. But for me I wasn’t really interested in the city or what happened, I was here for the sisters and their stories.

It took me a while to separate out the 3 sisters, maybe because Isla and Irene are such similar names, but I loved the multiple perspectives.

The ending was completely unexpected and I’m still not sure I got it, but it was a real surprise change of pace.

I didn’t love this as much as Our Wives Under the Sea but it is similar in theme and sure to be a huge hit.

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.

I previously read Our Wives Under the Sea and found it both gripping and unsettling in a way that made it stay with me to this day. Although Private Rites is a very different story, it had a very similar effect on me.

In a near future where climate change has lead to near-constant rain and most cities being flooded, 3 sisters have a complicated relationship both with each other and their father. After he passes away they’re forced to deal with their past and to confront difficult truths.

The setting, with the constant clouds and rain, flooded cities and the impact this has on travel and infrastructure gave a menacing atmosphere. The fact that this is something we could see happen made it all the more disturbing.

The troubled relationships between the sisters and their father would have made for an interesting story without the other elements, but adding them all together results in a delightfully disturbing story that will haunt me for some time.

When I wasn’t reading this book I was thinking about it, and it was the first book in a while that I was prioritising reading over pretty much everything else.

A haunting look at familial relationships and climate change, if you enjoyed the gentle horror and beautiful writing of the authors previous books then you will love this one too. And if you haven’t picked them up before I highly recommend you give this one a try.

I will read any word this author will toss my way - I adored 'Our Wives Under the Sea' and her collection of short stories 'Salt Slow', so when this novel was announced I had high hopes. I was not disappointed in the least. Yet again displaying gorgeous prose and easy flow of pace, Armfield drags us into an unsettled world in the not too distant future where the climate crisis really has reached a true crisis point. Past the point of no return, the world is flooding and the characters in this tale are living in a drowning city.

Armfield examines the three sisters lives in relation to one another and their now dead father. Against backdrop of constant rain and creeping tide lines, it feels ominous, uneasy, a feeling that something is coming, hurtling towards us as we pick apart their lives.

A masterclass in writing, packing so much history, baggage, trauma and atmosphere in such a compact book.

Private Rites has been pitched as a queer King Lear at the end of the world and that rings true in this bleak, blistering and brilliant book. It combines an intimate unravelling of grief and relationships from fractured characters with a ecological disaster looming on the horizon.

As expected from anything drawing on King Lear, this is a book deeply focused on the family and dysfunctional, tangled relationships within it. Isla, Irene and Agnes are the three central sisters, each with their own nuances and complexities. There is also a shadow of grief upon them - the recent death of their father unravels a web of lies and secrets long buried. Tangible among them is the resounding impact of Isla and Irene’s mother many years ago. Their trauma from this lies unresolved and rears itself again in unexpected ways for each of them. This book really grapples with the question of inheritance: inherited trauma, secrets and the concept of a legacy. In particular, that last theme comes into sharper focus against an impending ecological disaster where the futility of it all is laid bare. There is no legacy to have in a world wracked by horror.
I really enjoyed the way grief distorted aspects of themselves differently as they grappled with their individual problems and relationships. They are messy people but feel all the more human for it. The queer representation is also wonderful to see and there is a spectrum of experiences depicted here too. Armfield is very much concerned with the ripplings of time and emotions, shown in a narrative that does not always stay with the linear. It is unsettling in its uncanny playfulness with time. From the very first page, you are pushed off kilter and never fully return. There is such a strong sense of dread and foreboding that you cannot shake - it clings to you in a dreary fog. All the while, the storm rages outside.

Armfield’s writing has this intangible quality that sticks to you like glue. It is mercurial and mysterious, constantly shifting beneath your fingers. I find her writing irresistibly beautiful but with a distinct sense of uneasiness that lingers. It is crafted impeccably with exquisite and interesting word choices and overall this lyrical quality that adds a hazy, dreamlike atmosphere to the narratives. There is something magical about it but in the sense of the old magic, the one with bite and blood attached to it. The darkness of humanity and the impossibility of stopping the oncoming storm are imbued into every page. It adds this sense of hopelessness, an awareness that we’re doomed to repeat the same narrative over and over again. The prose is just delectable with such a fragile heart to it that sinks into oblivion cast against the horror you can see coming. Here it is also porous, seeping through into your skin and affecting your perspective. Armfield cleverly disengages you from the narrative you may know and replaces it with something entirely different. It still feels very much like a Shakespearean tragedy with the monumental scale and reprecussions, but also stays focused on these flawed characters as they take centre stage.

There is a creeping sense of dread that informs every page and sinks into your skin. The horror in this book is in the mundanity of life continuing against a horrific ecological crisis - beautifully illustrated by the excerpts of the point of view of The City. Here we get a bird’s eye view of impending doom contrasted by the pops of light and life of people. It makes for an unbearable tragedy and yet we can do nothing to stop what we know is coming. Armfield is poignant in this messaging, made all the more realistic by contemporary attitudes to climate change and other political movements. There is a sense of apathy that drains characters and makes them powerless chess pieces in a grander game that they cannot envision. Other angles of this come into play in the final sequence in a way that simultaneously answers many questions I had throughout reading and raises many more. This is not a book that will easily crack open and release its secrets, it is one where you will have to wade in yourself to piece it all together.

Private Rites is hands down one of my favourite reads of the year so far.

Julia Armfield the talent that you are! I loved Our Wives Under the Sea so when I saw Julia’s newest novel I knew I had to read it as soon as I could! And of course Julia did not let me down.

A phenomenal novel that I almost don’t want to tell you anything about it because I want you to go in blind and enjoy discovering it like I did. This book felt like wading through murky water in a dream trying to figure out what is going on and what will happen next. And when the ending comes you feel yourself slowly sinking with it. I loved it!!!!

Julia has a knack for building this sense of slowly building dread that you just cannot turn away from. The way she weaves intrigue through her novels is spellbinding and I will forever be in awe. Her characters even when unlikable in moments are enthralling. Her world building is so subtle but utterly masterful. I can’t wait to thrust this into the hands of everyone I meet!

They were not kidding when they said this was unsettling, reading this during 4 days of no water was an experience.

Julia Armfield has a beautiful way of writing queer characters and stories that feel so authentic, the good, the bad and the brilliant. Every character in this novel felt so fleshed out and their behaviours and reactions felt true and completely believable. Private Rites centres around 3 sisters who have become somewhat estranged but are brought together when their father dies, the dystopian twist of never ending rain and a flooded and ever changing landscape really added to the intensity of the reunion of the sisters.

I found this novel incredibly gripping and didn't want to put it down, I will say that if you have any climate / eco anxiety to approach this with a little caution - or do as I did and not read it just before going to sleep. 4 star rating because even though I really enjoyed this, I did find the ending incredibly rushed and it took away some of the joy - would still recommend highly. Armfield is one to be watched.

Julia Armfield has this addictive ability to completely absorb me in her prose. Just a chapter or two of her writing and I’m surprised by the real world, any thoughts that aren’t in her voice suddenly jerk me awake.

The drowned world she’s created is amazing and her ability to merge dread and the mundane should honestly be studied. This is a brilliant climate novel which will hit you with some home truths about how we relate to the world, the earth and the changing weather.

Perhaps because of how absorbed I was in those aspects of the story, I occassionally felt that the different halves of this book were on the cusp of being too many things at once. One character has a thought, suddenly, that ‘this is the wrong genre’ and despite that self-awareness, the sisters’ stories, the city, and the mysteries did sometimes feel like they weren’t quite in step with each other.

But I think Private Rites is going to linger with me regardless. It’s world is in my brain like Armfield’s vivid description of one sister’s memories of her mother; ‘spreading across her like lichen, like something resembling skin’

Easiest five stars I've given a book 🌊🌧️

"It’s been raining for a long time now..."

I was kindly gifted an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, and that review is "HAUNTING !!"

As an Our Wives Under the Sea fan first, human being second, I was equally ecstatic and nervous to get my hands on Julia Armfield's second novel. If I could tell you one thing about Private Rites, it's that it did not disappoint. Also it has lesbians. Also it's kind of dystopian but not in a way you might be expecting.

I highlighted so many sentences and passages from this book I can't even tell you! Armfield's novels have this habit of dropping earth shattering statements that either make you question everything you've ever believe, or wonder if she somehow has the ability to climb into your brain and put your abstract anxieties into concrete words.

My favourite thing about it is that Private Rites has imagery you can almost reach out and touch. Viscerally grotesque at times, delicate and stunning at others. Armfield's words are infectious in a way that's hard to describe.

The familiar relationship dynamics that are so intimate and often claustrophobic that Armfield dissects in Our Wives are present in Private Rites. This time, however, the scope is so much wider and infinitely more complex when it comes to sisterhood. Through Isla, Irene and Agnes we see their relationships with each explored, but also their each different relationships with their parents and their partners. One at the start of a relationship, one in the middle and one at the end.

The relationships aren't the only thing expanded in this second novel, however, the world is so much larger. I won't give too much away because it was glorious not knowing anything about this world Armfield created and getting to discover new pieces as she slowly pulls it apart. This book takes enormous tragedies and anxieties like climate change, death and trauma, and never tries to boil them down or define them. Instead they're dissected through the tiny and unique lenses of the people experiencing them. I don't think I've ever seen the every day and the almost cosmic scale sitting so effortlessly together on a page.

"A house, unlatched, is less a house and more a set of rooms through which one might be hunted."

What an opening to a novel! I knew I loved this book from the first unnerving sentences and loved it all the way to the breathtaking end. My expectations were high for this novel and they were more than met - really, no one is doing it like Julia Armfield.

This novel, out in June, is set in either an alternative reality or near future in which it has been raining for years, so long that young people don't really remember a time before water taxis and houses on stilts and endless damp. Three estranged adult daughters of a famous architect - Isla, Irene and Agnes - narrate this novel set in the time right after their father's death. A fourth narrator, The City, gives an eerie context for their grief, but the book is restrained in what it reveals about this world.

As the three women muddle through the funeral and the time that follows, coming together and clashing again, they try to make sense of their lives in shadow of this great man, their different but troubling experiences of childhood, the haunting presence and absence of their fathers two wives. All that time, something lurks on the outside, something haunting and dangerous growing ever closer, circling the characters with intent, slowly and then all at once.

The book feels like King Lear meets Succession meets The Haunting of Hill House or The Fall of the House of Usher, but it's just quintessentially Julia Armfield too, and her at her best yet.

Description:
Isla, Irene and Agnes are three sisters whose architect dad has just died, and who don’t particularly get on. Set in a near-future where sea levels have risen and the rain is near never-ending.

Liked:
The atmosphere is so dense and oppressive: reading this on the tube on the way to work I was sure that I was going to exit into fog and rain - I got dragged into it immediately. The world is totally convincing, and depressing in its believability. The characters are spikey, deeply flawed, and totally lost, but ultimately feel relatable. Their relationships and complex and juicy.

Disliked:
The ending got a tad melodramatic and seemed to wrap up quickly.

Would 100% recommend. Armfield’s best yet, IMO!

Anything Else:
This reminded me a lot of two books I’ve read (relatively) recently. Firstly, the dynamic between and focus on the sisters reminded me of Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors. Secondly, the sense of watery unease was very similar to The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M John Harrison. With both of those books, I found myself a bit disappointed; the themes really appealed, but something about the execution felt lacking. With Private Rites, I feel like those itches have been thoroughly scratched.

Thank you as always to the publishers and Netgalley for allowing me to read this book!

Having read Our Wives Under the Sea and being one of the very few people who wasn't massively blown away by it, I went into Private Rites with really no expectations. That being said, I was aware of the buzz around it and the existing glowing reviews. Well, I think I can safely say now that Armfield's writing is just not particularly for me. I can't quite put my finger on it and I wish that I could, but this book left me underwhelmed in the same way as her previous one. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why so many people adore her work, it's just not for me. I didn't dislike the book, but it wasn't great either and I found myself quite bored in parts and wondering what I was missing.

Isla, Irene and Agnes. Three sisters with a fractured relationship and tetchy dynamic, drawn back together after their father’s death. Navigating a city of perpetual rain where the dead can’t be buried or they will rise again - literally - the sisters move through, and exist in, this sodden landscape; a place where the daily produce many of us would take for granted is now harder to come back, and where power outages are a regular occurrence, with mysterious sirens sounding from the depths of buildings.

Julia Armfield has to be the queen of atmospheric, slow-build, haunting, water-logged writing. Add in a startling opening chapter that indicates a pending revelation of sorts and you have this tense, unsettling novel rippling with undercurrents of dread and helplessness in the face of the inevitable. As the water in the city slowly rises, so does our feeling that something is closing in on the sisters. Three complex and flawed characters, so well drawn. The novel deftly explores their current relationships and how childhood can shape our adult relationships; their individual memories of their relationship with their difficult father, a famous but stern and reclusive architect; their strained relationships between sisters after years of being pitted against each other; and their microcosmic sense of loss in the grand scheme of the dire state of the planet.
Armfield is such a distinct writer and in this novel, which blends a stark vision of where the climate crisis is heading with a raw delve into essential questions of family, identity and love, she once again brings us a striking and haunting story.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my DRC.

Isla, Irene and Agnes are three sisters attempting to shape meaningful lives from the wreckage of their toxic family life and the fact that they are living through the end of days in a drowning city where it never stops raining. The weight of water in this novel hangs as heavy as the emotional weight the sisters bear when their father dies and leaves them to tidy up the mess he left behind. A dystopian parable set at the end of the world. This reminded me in some ways of the writing of Emily St. John Mandel in that both authors are very good at creating a sense of human fragility and real, domestic lives lived against the backdrop of much bigger, more sinister things. This had the tension of a thriller but the heart of a love story.

I was really excited for this book after loving Julia Armfield’s debut and short story collection, and hearing it described as ‘King Lear at the end of the world’. The religious themes were interesting, I’d have liked to have heard more about Irene’s theology PhD and her own spiritual beliefs, but I think that’s just me being a gay Catholic.

The sibling dynamics are messy in a way that feels real, it’s giving Succession season 4 which is also giving King Lear. The characters are flawed, unlikeable but feel like fully fleshed-out people, and I cared about all three sisters by the end. The themes of processing grief for an emotionally abusive family member were well drawn and complex.

By far my favourite part of the book was the setting, I can’t stop thinking about the flooded city, the ‘ambient apocalypse’ where everyone still has to go to work while infrastructure literally and figuratively collapses around them. It’s scary because it feels like it could happen that way, like a frog in a pot. Armfield’s world-building and evocative language is brilliant and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

I wish I loved anything like Julia Armfield loves water.

Her latest is a queer take on King Lear (and also a particular recent-ish British movie that it would be massive spoiler to name) across a backdrop of climate change (which is a little annoyingly not really explored - I just kept thinking that if it’s raining this much, what food is growing and why hasn’t everyone starved to death?). It’s powerfully written, and you will feel distinctly soggy while reading. I did find the characters in this one a lot less relatable or even likeable than in Our Wives Under The Sea, which is fine, as not everything needs to be a cosy cuddle fest, but at the same time it doesn’t have the unsettling vibe of the earlier book. It’s a good book, but maybe doesn’t quite match the expectations I had after the debut. I’ll still be around for the next one though.

Another perfectly pitched narrative from Armfield, who knows exactly how to build tension without sacrificing strong characterisation as she does it. The sense of a world teetering on the edge of full-scale climate chaos does not, sadly, feel far-fetched. Less convinced, perhaps, by one of the other narrative strands that leads to its climax, however she's so skilled in laying it down and bringing it together, that doesn't really matter - and is, of course, entirely subjective. This should be a huge, huge hit.

This was a vivid story that was grippingly atmospheric and monumental in scope. I loved the Shakespearean allusion to King Lear, and characterisation was immaculate. It was well paced and the sense of setting (dystopian, claustrophobic, eerie, intense) added a huge amount of atmosphere to a very well written story. I've not read any of Julia Armfield's previous works but I will be adding them to my reading list.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

After Salt Slow and Our Wives Under the Sea, I couldn't wait to read Julia Armfield's new novel. And I absolutely loved Private Rites! Armfield's writing is so beautiful and vivid, and the story had me on the edge of my seat. It was great gaining insight into the sisters' lives and their relationships were so well done and complex, and at the same time, there was this sense of unease the entire time, that something was lying in wait. The climate crisis setting really hooked me too - it made for a suspensful atomsphere. Overall, this was a gripping read and I won't be able to stop talking about it.
Thank you Netgalley and 4th Estate and William Collins for the ARC!

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 @4thestate for the eARC! 4.5 stars.