Private Rites, Julia Armfield
Private Rites, the latest offering from Julia Armfield, has made a splash – pun intended. There’s certainly a theme to all of Armfield’s writing – water - and she does it so well that it’s impossible for this repetition to be a bad thing. Private Rites follows three sisters processing the death of their father and their own relationships to each other. The catch? They’re living in is a time of ceaseless rain – so ceaseless that the world is ending.
This book was so good. I had to force myself to slow down and savour the writing, because, from the first page, I knew I was in for a treat. The setting of the end of the world caused by never-ending rain is such an interesting one to become immersed in, as we tend to imagine the end of the world announcing itself with a big bang, but this was not that. Rather, it was an unsettling disquiet that permeated every page – soggy, damp and subtly sinister, resulting in an ending that feels like the kind of recurring nightmare you might have had as a child.
As well as being creepy and rainy, this is stunning writing on sisterhood, and grief, and every aspect of it was so, so well crafted. The book switches between each sister’s perspective, and Armfield has thoroughly perfected characterising oldest, middle, and youngest siblings. ‘Sisterhood, she thinks, is a trap. You all get stuck in certain roles forever,’ is just one quote, from a host of poignant musings on the unique relationship of sisterhood, with all its highs and lows.
Lemony Snicket has a wonderful quote on the death of somebody you love feeling like you’ve missed a step climbing up the stairs, and Private Rites reminded me of an adult version of this feeling. Armfield interrogates grief itself in her writing, and what that grief means when there has always been absence. It’s very nuanced, with this absence coming in the form of losing a parent, albeit a distant, dysfunctional one, and thinking about the ways in which it brings about the end of childhood, at any age. The overall effect is an incredibly powerful, King Lear-esque tale that’s hard to tear your eyes away from. It’s a whole lot of eerie, waterlogged goodness, and not a read that you’ll want to miss. .
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