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A review by elj_ne
Private Rites by Julia Armfield
4.5
Thank you to NetGalley and 4th Estate for approving me for one of my most anticipated reads of 2024.
This is a climate dystopia book in which society is sliding slowly into the abyss - bleak in its realism in the way the world accepts, compartmentalises and copes with Ultimate Bad Weather, with the places they can go gradually shrinking in on them - forcing people into higher and higher buildings and cutting off access points to different parts of the world, then the city itself. While I was reading it I was so aware that the claustrophobia and continous, inevitable decay feels quite reminiscent of the current state of the UK - the creeping mold, the housing crisis, inept government and transport issues are all too familiar and it doesn't feel a world away from our own. Fun!
In the middle of this narrative are three sisters who are dealing with the looming absence of their newly dead, emotionally abusive father and trying to figure out how the relationships between each other and the people they love are shaped by both him and the world they've grown up in. I enjoyed how frankly dislikable these women often were (at lease Isla and Irene) and how the switching POV allowed us to see both how they percieve themselves and how each other. They also each have jobs, romantic lives that carry on going and have to adapt in the wake of the disasters around them.
Armfield's writing is gorgeous and insightful, I enjoyed the narrative tangents within the POVs and also within the 'City' POVs. This is a more ambitious book in terms of world building and character than Our Wives and in some ways feels like a less cohesive story overall but it's a great addition to the Armfield oeuvre and I can't wait to see what she does with water next!
This is a climate dystopia book in which society is sliding slowly into the abyss - bleak in its realism in the way the world accepts, compartmentalises and copes with Ultimate Bad Weather, with the places they can go gradually shrinking in on them - forcing people into higher and higher buildings and cutting off access points to different parts of the world, then the city itself. While I was reading it I was so aware that the claustrophobia and continous, inevitable decay feels quite reminiscent of the current state of the UK - the creeping mold, the housing crisis, inept government and transport issues are all too familiar and it doesn't feel a world away from our own. Fun!
In the middle of this narrative are three sisters who are dealing with the looming absence of their newly dead, emotionally abusive father and trying to figure out how the relationships between each other and the people they love are shaped by both him and the world they've grown up in. I enjoyed how frankly dislikable these women often were (at lease Isla and Irene) and how the switching POV allowed us to see both how they percieve themselves and how each other. They also each have jobs, romantic lives that carry on going and have to adapt in the wake of the disasters around them.
Armfield's writing is gorgeous and insightful, I enjoyed the narrative tangents within the POVs and also within the 'City' POVs. This is a more ambitious book in terms of world building and character than Our Wives and in some ways feels like a less cohesive story overall but it's a great addition to the Armfield oeuvre and I can't wait to see what she does with water next!