Thoughts on Private Rites
Right off the bat let me tell you this is a library borrow. I know.
But! I've been laboriously working my way through this book for the past two weeks and I want to talk about it.
Private Rites is a vibe. It's gloomy, atmospheric, and gorgeously written, but also nothing happens forever. For the first two hundred pages I felt every single second that passed while I was reading. There were days I made it ten minutes before the overwhelming weight of time consciousness had me fleeing to other preoccupations. Sometimes I'd get lucky and be absorbed into the book for long minutes before I was glancing at the clock, sure that it must be time, finally, for me to put it down and return to work. It invariably wasn't.
Then suddenly it broke. I don't know why, but the last 90 pages flew by, though I can't say anything really happened until the last 15 pages either. It was almost like I'd given in to this book being an exquisitely written mood. Or maybe some tension in the book snapped and it being too far into the short (hah) 291 pages I realized nothing was going to happen. When that ashtray hit the glass and failed to crack it on the page I had reached the summit and could let gravity tumble me back down. Whatever it was, I sprinted to the finish, expecting nothing more and not being disappointed.
Private Rites by Julia Armfield
Three sisters deal with the death of their famous architect father in a city being consumed by rising water and never ending rain.
You Should Read If: You enjoy beautiful poetic prose, creepy atmospheric writing, and don't mind a book that is 100% vibes. If you're anxious about climate change and want to wallow in a world in which the land is drowning and everyone is still trapped in their daily drudgery as the tide rises around them.
Don't Read If: Having to close read beautifully atmospheric writing in which people are having excruciatingly drawn out conversations sounds like torture. Do you only enjoy books with a driving plot where characters take actions beyond existing in thematically representative tableaus of existential dread about climate change? Don't read this one.
Buy, Borrow, or Pass? Borrow. If you're going to buy a Julia Armfield novel I highly recommend Our Wives Under the Sea. The structure of that novel combines fantastically with Armfield's writing style to ratchet up the tension as the novel unfolds.
Reading snapshot:
Books read total: 14
Books read from my shelves: 9
Books in progress: 7
Current library checkouts: 11
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