Description

‘Stunning’
DAZED

‘Her prose sparkles’ ELIZA CLARK

‘A book of extraordinary sentences’ MEGAN HUNTER

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.

‘Lyrical, haunting, unsettling’ Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World

‘Armfield’s latest novel is the author at her finest’ Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth

‘[A] signature cocktail of deadpan wit and staggering beauty’ Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller

‘Brilliant, original … an era-defining writer’ Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time

‘Astonishing, ambitious’ Sarvat Hasin, author of The Giant Dark

Publisher Review

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 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 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 ... I'll 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