Private Rites

From the bestselling author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a haunting, heart wrenching 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’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.

Review

'A page-turner that makes you slow down to appreciate the brilliance of the prose. One of my favourite novels of the past few years’ Jeff VanderMeer, author of Absolution

'Evocative yet grounded, blending the mythical with the cavalier… Her imagination is vivid’ Observer

‘Armfield writes so gracefully. I love her glancing, pitiless social observations’ The Times

‘Seductive…compelling…brilliantly audacious’ Guardian

‘Intriguing and provocative… A writer worth reading’ Financial Times

‘Characteristically eerie and emotive' GQ

'An evocative mystery set at the end of the world' Guardian

‘A hauntingly good book about family, faith and the climate crisis’ iNews

‘The emotional depth and unique storytelling ensures Armfield's reputation as a distinctive voice … a must-read for fans of her hauntingly beautiful prose’ Glamour

'Armfield lends a quasi-mythic dimension to an intimate story of sibling rivalry and familial disinheritance’ Daily Mail

‘A sharply observed exploration of grief, family and the end of the world as we know it’ Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller

‘A book of extraordinary sentences, set in end-times which feel bleakly real yet pulse with a tireless, tangible force of love’ Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From

‘Witty, brutal … Private Rites has the elemental power of a thunderstorm and the thrilling emotional honesty of a first kiss … An era-defining writer’ Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time

‘An astonishing ambitious novel that won't let you go’ Sarvat Hasin, author of The Giant Dark

‘Lyrical, haunting, unsettling, and J.G. Ballard-ian in apocalyptic scope … Deeply, passionately, messily human’ Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World

'Exquisite … … A masterful feat, and a joy to read –awe-inspiring’ Peter Scalpello, author of Limbic

‘Beauty aches through every word’ Heather Parry, author of Orpheus Builds a Girl

'Intimate, unnerving and sopping wet’ Alison Rumfitt, author of Brainwyrms

About the Author

Julia Armfield's work has been published in Granta, The White Review and Best British Short Stories 2019 and 2021. In 2019, she was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award. She was longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Award 2018, and won the White Review Short Story Prize 2018 and a Pushcart Prize in 2020. She is the author of salt slow, a collection of short stories, which was longlisted for the Polari Prize 2020 and the Edge Hill Prize 2020. Her debut novel, Our Wives Under The Sea, was shortlisted for the Foyles Fiction Book of the Year Award 2022 and shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2023. She lives and works in London.