Private Rites by Julia Armfield Book Review

 Private Rites 

By Julia Armfield 

Finalist for Arthur C Clarke Award 2025

Published Year: 2024 

Page Count: 235 pages 

Medium Used: Kindle PW 

Genre: Dystopian, Horror, Drama,Dysfunctional Families, Science Fiction, Coming of Age, LGBTQ,2026-read. 

Rating: 3/5 😀😀😇

I came across this book while browsing the shelves of Arthur Clarke Award nominees for 2025. Immediately taken in by the idea of a story loosely based on King Lear and his three daughters, I picked it, setting aside three other books I was reading at that point. The dominant thought running in my mind all the time I was reading was, where is this story going? I also remember thinking, at multiple points, that the author is not a sensational storyteller. But I was resolute to not give in to the voice in my head prompting me to DnF and see the book through to the end. Having finished, I have ambivalent feelings for this. I liked the character development and appreciate the fact that there are three female characters, quite similar yet with subtle differences in their thinking and profiles which the author captured well in text. I didn't see the end coming. Frankly, I don't think anyone else would either. Because it comes totally out of the blue. The author has sprung something quite unexpected on the unsuspecting reader and expects,  I guess, for them to accept it without eyebrows raised. 

The world in which this story is set is really strange and I wondered,more than once, if it is only a front to keep the story going. For over two decades, rain has been falling constantly with only brief periods of respite. My mind keeps asking if this is possible. How can the clouds hold so much water and even if global warming played a role, does it go on for that long period? And as the story progresses, we see that the condition of life in the "city" is increasingly getting worse. People are finding themselves homeless with their houses flooded and devoid of power with collapsing power grids and exploding transmission lines. There is an influx of creatures like crabs, oysters, shoals of eels along with the debris from overflowing gutters and drains, water flooding in from seas and oceans. The despair over an uncertain and dystopian future is ripping partners/couples apart, driving some to become excessively religious to the point of believing in totems, sigils and rituals with blood sacrifices. The ambience is bleak and dark as can be expected. I wondered at the absence of a more widespread panic. I wondered why the author hasn't named the city. 

Isla, Irene and Agnes are three sisters. Isla is the eldest and is 35 years old. Irene, one year younger, is 34. Agnes, the youngest, is 24. Iris and Irene share a mother while Agnes is born to their step mother. Isla and Irene lose their mother to suicide when they are quite young. Their mother gradually loses her mind due to stress and the revelation of their father's cheating. In the last years of her life, she was clearly demented, believing in rituals involving sacrifices, relying on astrology and displelling evil spirits that effect people's sanity etc. The faith in the supernatural has quite taken her out of her sane element, I could say. After her death, their father married another woman who giving birth to a baby, leaves without notice. She just disappears from their lives. As if these experiences are not enough to leave damaging impressions on young girls' minds, the father is quite a psychopathic character. He has, from very early on, detested the kids and drew lines which they couldn't cross. Isla is known to have self harmed on multiple occasions. Irene has anger issues and Agnes has intimacy issues all of which, unresolved, they carry into adulthood. We can see how they grow up to resent their father and also each other. I didn't understand why they hated each other - shouldn't those terrible ordeals they faced together have drawn them more closer? 

Isla is a psychiatric therapist who finds security in order and organization. Her marriage to Morven, a woman, is dissolving with the wife running off to a community center to experience a different way of "living" in these "turbulent" times. Irene lives with a transgender(or so I thought with the references made as they/them) man, Jude, who is her rock. He is calm in the face of her quick rages and simmering angers. Agnes works at a coffee house and is a lesbian who doesn't want to commit beyond the physical relationship. I prefer avoiding smut and I didn't like reading it in this book as well. Though it is brief and only involves Agnes with her new girl fiend Stephanie. The three sisters haven't talked with each other in years. They only come together now in the face of their father's death. They don't care and don't mourn him on his death bed. He leaves all his wealth to architecture foundations. Only his house, a glass/mirror house that is designed to withstand the climate conditions, he confers to Agnes. He gives nothing to Isla or Irene. I don't think the author gave a convincing answer to this sudden affection from the father towards Agnes. The three sisters assemble in the house for a get together and are exposed to some deep weirdness and madness that literally tears the house and them apart. 

I didn't understand the ending at all. Is the author suggesting that the mindless rituals have had an impact? What happened to Isla? Is she dead or missing from the scene merely? I also question how this book, beyond the setting with a father and his three daughters, is comparable to King Lear? And how the daughters committed either to other women/trans people compare to the classic story? 

Well, feel free to drop your comments in what u think!! Cheers!  🍻 🥂