From the beloved, 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 old rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father, an architect as cruel as he was revered, dies. 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.
The sisters are more estranged than ever, and their 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.
Don't just take our word for it...
“As an Our Wives Under the Sea evangelist, I was absolutely foaming at the mouth for Private Rites…It’s gay and eerie and vibey and weird…Drink it up, baby!”
– LitHub
“Honestly this new book might be even better than [Armfield’s] last. Private Rites is a haunting and evocative exploration of human connection and the supernatural, showcasing the same lyrical prowess and keen insight into the human condition her readers adore…Her characters navigate love and loss with a razor sharp wit. The emotional depth and unique storytelling ensures Armfield’s reputation as a distinctive voice in contemporary fiction…A must-read for fans of her hauntingly beautiful prose.”
– Glamour
“Slick and slippery, Julia Armfield’s latest novel is the author at her finest. Private Rites is committed to plumbing the depths of what might be unknowable: the monstrous, inexorable thrust of climate change and the delicate, dangerous tangle of family and sisterhood. Armfield writes the kind of books that stick with you for life. I am proud to be one of her biggest fans.”
– Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of With Teeth
Taste the very first page
On the afternoon of her father’s death, Isla takes a session with a man who was exorcised of evil spirits at the age of seventeen. He is a new patient, referred from the counseling program at the hospital—white teeth and a voice whittled down from a scream. When he clasps his hands around one knee, the veins bunch up between his knuckles, pale blue against the jut of the bone. Isla tries not to notice this, inspects her own hands instead and the bitten-off edge of a cuticle. Bad habits; both the tendency to chew the skin around her nails and to notice a tic or a physical trait of a patient and allow it to grow, blowing up until it becomes their entirety, the characteristic against which all else seems to pale. She lives in horror of slip-ups, practices saying their names aloud to counter her mental Rolodex: patients listed in order as Bug Eyes, as Taps His Foot When He’s Horny, as Big Hands, as Talks Like a Robot, as Tits.
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