“With Armfield’s latest, she reimagines King Lear with a tale of love and loss tinged in supernatural wickedness.”
The rain has been falling for a long time, and now the land has reshaped itself, and the old rituals are creeping back in. Isla, Irene, and Agnes, three sisters, have not spoken to each other for a long time. When their father, a cruel yet revered architect, passes away, the sisters see this as a way to come together. Meeting at their old grand glass house, they sort through the memories he left behind. Their fragile bond is shattered by what they discover in his last will and testament.
Now more estranged than before, their lives spin out of control. Irene’s relationship is threatening to burst, Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling her, and sardonic Agnes is falling in love, for the first time ever. Something else is happening, something that has to do with their mother’s disappearance so long ago, and the strangers who always seem so interested in the sisters’ lives. They realize they’ve been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.
Why we’re excited about this book:
UK writer Julia Armfield is ready to breakthrough into the horror fiction world in a big way. The author of Our Wives Under the Sea and the short-story collection Salt Slow, Armfield’s short fiction has graced the pages of such publications as Neon Magazine, Granta, Stockholm Review of Literature, and Outsiders, 3 of Cups Anthology among others. With Armfield’s latest, she reimagines King Lear with a tale of love and loss tinged in supernatural wickedness. Jeff VanderMeer (Annihilation, Hummingbird Salamander) calls Private Rites: “Another stunning work by Armfield, a gorgeous hybrid of the gothic, deep character studies, and a half-drowned landscape. The writing is so sharp and distinctive it’ll make you gasp. A page-turner that makes you slow down to appreciate the brilliance of the prose. One of my favorite novels of the past few years.” and Paul Tremblay (Cabin at the End of the World, Horror Movie) says: “Private Rites is lyrical, haunting, unsettling, and J.G. Ballardian in apocalyptic scope. What makes the novel soar even as its world drowns are the sisters―Iris, Irene, and Agnes―who are deeply, passionately, messily human.”
Releasing from Flatiron Books 3 December 2024, Private Rites by Julia Armfield is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA
