Private Rites Author : Julia Armfield ISBN-13 : 978-0008608033 Publisher : Fourth Estate Guideline Price : £16.99 Julia Armfield’s atmospheric second novel, Private Rites, is set in the aftermath of a second Deluge. Great swathes of land are submerged, the social infrastructure is collapsing and people are turning to arcane rituals.
Out of this chaos one architect, Stephen Carmichael, has risen to prominence with his buildings designed to blot out the outside world and create havens for the few who can afford them. The story follows the unravelling lives of his three daughters, Isla, Irene and Agnes, as they respond to his death and their unequal inheritance: “King Lear and his dyke daughters”, one of them quips. Even as the rain keeps falling and the water levels rise, as news trickles down of mass suicides, famine and displaced populations, the characters still have to tap on and off to board the boats that have replaced public transport, and Agnes still goes to work every day as a barista, drawing patterns in lattes.
What makes Armfield’s apocalypse resonant (and relatable) is its banality. Her novelist’s eye is trained not on the social but on the psychological. The book’s most compelling insights are private: “The problem with love, of course, is that it frequently asks too much of unlovable people.
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