Private Rites

(Paperback)

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Julia Armfield is one of my favourite writers Florence Welch

A writer whose next move you wouldnt want to miss Observer

The bestselling author of Our Wives Under the Sea returns with a stunning, unsettling novel following three sisters navigating queer love and faith at the end of the world.

Its been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves and the cities have retreated to higher storeys. 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. Soon it becomes clear that others have also taken an interest in both his estate and in them, and that perhaps their inheritance may not be theirs alone.

Praise for Julia Armfield:

'Armfield is an enormous, gut-wrenching talent' Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters

Armfield's distinct voice is her own: singular, visceral and eerie Sinad Gleeson, author of Constellations

Private Rites has the elemental power of a thunderstorm and the thrilling emotional honesty of a first kiss. Julia Armfield is an era-defining writer Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time

Reviews

Praise for Private Rites:

A witty, brutal examination of the ways that the bonds of family can be strangulating, or transfigured by the painful pressure of intimacy into something devastatingly, unfairly tender; and one of the most brilliant, original visions of climate crisis Britain I have ever read.Private Riteshas the elemental power of a thunderstorm and the thrilling emotional honesty of a first kiss. Julia Armfield is an era-defining writer Kaliane Bradley, author ofThe Ministry of Time

Praise for Our Wives Under the Sea:

Deeply romantic and fabulously strange Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith

You hear a lot of people lamenting the death of innovation in contemporary fiction and Armfield is a brilliant counterpoint The Times, Best Books for Summer

Julia Armfield is one of my favourite writers, Our Wives Under The Sea moves fluidly between horror story and love story, the gorgeous and the grotesque. A contemporary gothic fairy tale, sublime in its creepiness Florence Welch

Beautiful, otherworldly, like floating through water with your eyes open Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under

Strange, unnerving, lyrically written Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others

Part bruisingly tender love story, part nerve-clanging submarine thriller heart-slicing,cinematic Ill be thinking about it for ages The Times

Armfield breaks your heart over and over (but in a good way, promise) Cosmopolitan

Tender, strange, lucid and so assured if you love sci-fi or love stories or books that defy labels or chew-your-arm-off good writing, this is for you Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies

Author Bio

Julia 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.