Private Rites by Julia Armfield

Publisher - 4th Estate

Published - Out Now

Price - £13.99 paperback £4.99 ebook

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.

In WW2 there were still pubs open and cinemas showed films. While this week we have a new war and major global tensions we probably have all still played with our phones, gone to work and debated the shopping for the week. The term permacrisis feels modern but perhaps humanity has always done its version of doomscrolling to avoid looking too hard at what goes on in the world. In Julia Armfield’s interesting tale Private Rited we have a novel of family drama and climate change that for me doesn’t quite for me gel these aspects together.

The three Carmichael children are now adults. Isla, Irene and Agnes are quite distant from one another rarely in the same room or talking regularly. Their father a prestigious architect was also cold, cruel and bullying but the children ave taken this to live their lives often apart and if they do meet then arguments soon begin. But their father’s death created new uncertainty as to what’s next in their lives and the world beyond increasingly sees the waters rise, the rain falling for days and the city feels like it will not stay together for much longer:

There are lots of things I appreciate about this book. The sisters relationships with one another are a highpoint. That sense of sibling rivalry that has gone toxic, the weird feeling that family stays family if you don’t even that much in common and it all feels very true. We have three very interesting characters to get to know. Irene a therapist is the eldest but increasingly showing a lack of interest in her patients. The eldest who always takes responsibility and ploughs on is dealing with an unexpected divorce. Isla actually has a good relationship with their partner Jude but is always anxious, struggling with her angry side and trying to find a way and then the very youngest is Agnes, aloof, drifting and yet may just possibly have found herself actually in love. Armfield makes us watch these people’s lives their inner and outer faces and by exploring their memories of growing up we can see how they’ve turned into these people but there is also a regular lack of anyone taking ownership. They feel very genuine and are the heart of the book. Their shifting dynamics, the pressure making their various armour playing crack and their inner emotions - two we see have panic attacks at nearly the same time all make us feel if they could just actually be honest with one another they could have hope but they rarely allow themselves to show their vulnerabilities.

Another fascinating aspect is how this story uses climate change as a backdrop and a metaphor for the way people know there is a problem but ignore it and ignore it until it actually floods your room. Throughout we see the characters watch the news articles, see the power outages, watch flood waters take and take and get there is a passivity to their lives on it. They keep soldiering on but also rarely mention it to anyone else. This is the new normal even if already worse than a few weeks ago. We watch news stories about mental health, see families struggle in poverty and yet that is simply the way of the world. It’s delivered very well and you can feel the eternal dampness of this world that feels increasingly smaller and wetter and chimed neatly with the sister’s lives falling to pieces and none telling the other until it’s too late.

At its heart though this feels a family drama using the end of the world as an extended metaphor than a drama exploring the end of the world and for me the story drifts a bit too much. The first half is very strong and would have had a wonderful closing scene as a novella but the second half feels a lot less purposeful. Suddenly Armfield adds almost a folk horror aspect out of no where and that is more jarring and artificial to me than a wonderful twist. It feels a story that suddenly needed a big act and relaxed there wasn’t enough in the wider text to deliver one. There is also a touch of the middle class family drama to things. I can’t help notice a story talking about poverty, people struggling and none think using their wealth to help others or even sell the expensive family home may have been a great idea. The passivity makes sense to the story but for me feels a little strange to believe. I did like Agnes’ development as she finds herself finally in love and a reminder that even in the darkest of times we can make connections and be stronger because of them. Her scenes I feel are the strongest of all and she’s a character you do slowly root for as she makes these realisations about herself.

Ultimately I’m glad to have read this novel. Armfield writes charger and emotion beautifully and while for me it’s not quite the complete success I was hoping for it’s interesting and thought-provoking enough I think I’d recommend it to try.