Close on the heels of the success of Our Wives Under The Sea, Private Rites is Julia Armfield’s second novel. Set in a world that is gradually becoming submerged in constant floods of rainwater, the book follows sisters Irene, Isla and Agnes in the wake of their father’s death. None of them have spoken to him in some years and they have barely even spoken to one another, but they fall back in together—often with some friction—as they figure out how to mourn somebody they were already estranged from, in a world that is ending anyway.
It is surely difficult to write a book set during the end of the world and have the main focus be something other than that, but Private Rites manages it well. Rather than falling into nihilism or dwelling on the rising waters, the book ensures that the reader is continually compelled by the sisters overall. The floods are always in the background—the women go to clubs whose windows look out underwater like eerie neon-lit aquariums, take water taxis to the hospital their father is kept in, live in high-rises looking out on the constant rainclouds. Constructing a backdrop such as this without wheeling too far into existentialism is a triumph. Its tone is reminiscent to other almost apocalyptic media such as Phoebe Bridgers’ ballad ‘I Know The End’.
One of Armfield’s great strengths in this story is her worldbuilding. While her first novel took plenty of swerves into the mysterious, its setting was a world similar enough to our own. The England of Private Rites, however, is one close to the end of its life, with parks replaced by expanses of floodwater and trains replaced with ferries. The rain is so constant that indoor smoking has once again been allowed because of the number of people complaining about having to stand outside for too long. It is a world that is both eerily alien and simultaneously feels plausible. Armfield’s attention to detail in this world is clear, from her descriptions of houses designed for the climate—buildings that climb away from the floods, houses on adjustable legs that rise above the water level a little more every so often—to the image of fallen pylons and cable cars for transport. Her first novel is about the water permeating a particular character, but this one is about how it permeates our entire world, as well as how people might navigate it.
Perhaps the most impressive part of Armfield’s novel is how perfectly distinct the sisters are from the very beginning. A pitfall that some dysfunctional family stories can fall into is introducing too many family members at once—some begin to blur together and it is hard to find their distinct personalities amid the usually-dense plot of a family story. With two sisters having names beginning with “I” and all three rolling off the tongue in the same way, it could have been easy for the three to become, at times, indistinguishable. However, while writing the sisters’ alternating perspectives, Armfield makes them not only distinct but incredibly tangible. Each one feels like somebody you know, or somebody you could meet. Isla is the oldest, the one who can’t help but try to control things. Irene is the middle child, bitter that her family never perceive her correctly, who practises anger “like it’s a job”, as Agnes states. (Agnes is the youngest, their half-sister, often forgotten but with perhaps the most compelling and unique perspectives, less settled into life than her sisters.) Even when they are not sympathetic, they are interesting, a trait which carries them further than the ‘likeable-but-bland’ character archetype.
One of the most unique recent takes on the end of the world, rendered in cutting prose, Private Rites may not be the England we want to live in, but it is certainly one worth reading about.
Words by Casey Langton
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