
Private Rites
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Hannah van der Westhuysen
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By:
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Julia Armfield
About this listen
“One of my favorite novels of the past few years.”—Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation
From the award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world
It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and old rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father, an architect as cruel as he was revered, dies. His death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.
The sisters are more estranged than ever, and their lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams, Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling, and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters’ lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.
©2024 Julia Armfield (P)2024 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
A Most Anticipated Book (Goodreads, LitHub, BookRiot, Bookish)
“Inspired by Shakespeare’s King Lear, this characteristically eerie and emotive novel explores faith, legacy, and grief for loved ones and for the world as we know it.”—GQ
“[Armfield] is both poet and prophet of the watery and the queer and the channels connecting them…Seductive…Compelling…Brilliantly audacious.”—The Guardian
“As an Our Wives Under the Sea evangelist, I was absolutely foaming at the mouth for Private Rites...It’s gay and eerie and vibey and weird...Drink it up, baby!”—LitHub
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- By: Anne Youngson
- Narrated by: Helen Lloyd, Lars Knudsen
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Brought together by a shared fascination with the Tollund Man, subject of Seamus Heaney’s famous poem, Anders Larsen, an urbane man of facts, and Tina Hopgood begin writing letters to one another. And from their vastly different worlds, they find they have more in common than they could have imagined. As they open up to one another about their lives, an unexpected friendship blooms. But then Tina’s letters stop coming, and Anders is thrown into despair. How far are they willing to go to write a new story for themselves?
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Audible books
- By Joe B on 09-15-19
By: Anne Youngson
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What It's Like in Words
- A Novel
- By: Eliza Moss
- Narrated by: Victoria Blunt
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Enola is approaching 30 and everything feels like a lot. The boxes aren’t ticked and she feels adrift in a way she thought she would have beaten by now. She wants to be a writer but can't finish a first draft; she romanticizes her childhood but won’t speak to her mother; she has never been in a serious relationship but yearns to be one half of a couple that DIYs together at the weekends.
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unique and engrossing
- By Denise Emery on 12-26-24
By: Eliza Moss
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Cuckoo
- By: Gretchen Felker-Martin
- Narrated by: Amy Landon, Avi Roque, Grace Rolek, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived—but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person. Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it's too late. The fate of the world depends on it.
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Beautiful authentic queer characters
- By Ember on 07-09-24
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The Bohemians
- A Novel
- By: Jasmin Darznik
- Narrated by: Dylan Moore
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In this novel of the glittering and gritty Jazz Age, a young aspiring photographer named Dorothea Lange arrives in San Francisco in 1918. As a newcomer - and naïve one at that - Dorothea is grateful for the fast friendship of Caroline Lee, a vivacious, straight-talking Chinese American with a complicated past, who introduces Dorothea to Monkey Block, an artists’ colony and the bohemian heart of the city. Dazzled by Caroline and her friends, Dorothea is catapulted into a heady new world of freedom, art, and politics.
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Fascinating time, people and place
- By Claudio Salusso on 10-01-21
By: Jasmin Darznik
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When We Were Silent
- A Novel
- By: Fiona McPhillips
- Narrated by: India Mullen
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Louise Manson is the newest student at Highfield Manor, Dublin’s most exclusive private school. It seems nearly perfect: the high arched window alcoves and tall granite pillars, the overspill of lilac at the front gate and the immaculate playing fields, the giggling students, the dusty, oak-lined library, and the dark, festering secret she has come to expose. At first, Lou’s working-class status makes her the consummate outsider, though all that changes when she is befriended by the beautiful and wealthy Shauna Power.
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Loved!
- By Jenni on 10-22-24
By: Fiona McPhillips
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Parade
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Genevieve Gaunt
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success. In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas. At the age of twenty-two, the painter G leaves home for a new life in another country, far from the disapproval of her parents. Her paintings attract the disapproval of the man she later marries.
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Incomprehensible biologically-essentialist nonsense
- By Lu Clark on 03-15-25
By: Rachel Cusk
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The Two-Family House
- A Novel
- By: Linda Cohen Loigman
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Brooklyn, 1947: In the midst of a blizzard, in a two-family brownstone, two babies are born minutes apart to two women. They are sisters by marriage, with an impenetrable bond forged before and during that dramatic night; but as the years progress, small cracks start to appear, and their once deep friendship begins to unravel. No one knows why, and no one can stop it. One misguided choice; one moment of tragedy. Heartbreak wars with happiness and almost but not quite wins.
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A Two Family Saga
- By Sara on 08-17-17
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The Lost for Words Bookshop
- A Novel
- By: Stephanie Butland
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Loveday Cardew prefers books to people. If you look carefully, you might glimpse the first lines of the novels she loves most tattooed on her skin. But there are some things Loveday will never, ever show you. Into her hiding place - the bookstore where she works - come a poet, a lover, and three suspicious deliveries. Someone has found out about her mysterious past. Will Loveday survive her own heartbreaking secrets?
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I thoroughly enjoyed this story.
- By Tammy on 11-09-18
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Cantoras
- A Novel
- By: Carolina De Robertis
- Narrated by: Carolina De Robertis
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A genre-defining novel and De Robertis's masterpiece, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit. At once timeless and groundbreaking, Cantoras is a tale about the fire in all our souls and those who make it burn.
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Excruciating to get through
- By Xochitl Casillas on 11-30-20
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The Painted Girls
- A Novel
- By: Cathy Marie Buchanan
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Julia Whelan, Danny Cambell
- Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Paris, 1878: Following the death of their father from overwork, the three van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without their father’s wages, and with what little their mother earns as a laundress disappearing down the absinthe bottle, eviction from their single boarding room seems imminent. With few options for work available for a girl, bookish 14-year-old Marie and her younger sister Charlotte are dispatched to the Paris Opera, where for a scant seven francs a week, the girls will be trained to enter its famous ballet. Their older sister, stubborn and insolent 17-year-old Antoinette, finds herself launched into the orbit of Émile Zola....
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Only a Pastel Version of the *Beautiful Era*
- By Mel on 02-03-13
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A Likely Story
- A Novel
- By: Leigh McMullan Abramson
- Narrated by: Mia Barron, Cynthia Farrell, James Fouhey, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in the nineties in New York City as the only child of famous parents was both a blessing and a curse for Isabelle Manning. Her beautiful society hostess mother, Claire, and New York Times bestselling author father, Ward, were the city’s intellectual It couple. Ward’s glamorous obligations often took him away from Isabelle, but Claire made sure her childhood was always filled with magic and love. Now an adult, after many false starts and the unexpected death of her mother, she faces her upcoming thirty-fifth birthday alone and on the verge of a breakdown.
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Cute story
- By Loen Bradford on 01-10-25
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The Spellbook of Katrina Van Tassel
- A Story of Sleepy Hollow
- By: Alyssa Palombo
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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When Ichabod Crane arrives in the spooky little village of Sleepy Hollow as the new schoolmaster, Katrina Van Tassel is instantly drawn to him. Through their shared love of books and music, they form a friendship that quickly develops into romance. When romance gives way to passion, Ichabod and Katrina embark on a secret love affair, sneaking away into the woods after dark to be together - all while praying they do not catch sight of Sleepy Hollow’s legendary Headless Horseman. That is until Ichabod suddenly disappears, leaving Katrina alone and in a perilous position.
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boring, terrible bodice-ripping drivel
- By BooksAndTrouble on 10-04-18
By: Alyssa Palombo
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The Nature of Disappearing
- A Novel
- By: Kimi Cunningham Grant
- Narrated by: Emily Pike Stewart
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Emlyn doesn't let herself think about the past. How she and her best friend, Janessa, barely speak anymore. How Tyler, the love of her life, left her half dead on the side of the road three years ago. Her new life is simple and safe. She lives alone in her Airstream trailer and works as a fishing and hunting guide in scenic Idaho. Her closest friends are the community's makeshift reverend and a handsome Forest Service ranger who took her in at her lowest.
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So good! Kept me guessing
- By Gotlost.onpurpose on 04-20-25
What listeners say about Private Rites
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Megs
- 02-26-25
Beautifully Written, But Mainly Fluff and Filler
Where to start? I want to give this book praise for everything it does well. Like everything Julia Armfield does, this book is gorgeously written in a way that brings you smack dab in the middle of the world and makes you forget reality. The sisters all feel real, grounded, and believable. Their flaws will resonate, and they feel like they could be your own family, struggling through life and love. But, unfortunately, that is the height of what this book does well. It is less a novel and more a snapshot of three sisters going through life at the end(?) of the world. The plot, while roughly that of King Lear, is basically non-existent. 90% of the book feels like filler and fluff, setting up back stories and side interests that ultimately don't mean a damn thing. The plot doesn't really exist, and is basically all rushed through in 1-2 chapters at end. And speaking of endings, Julia's works never really seem to end, just kind of stop. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just something to expect. In Our Wives Under The Sea, it helps fit the jarring changes of the characters and their lives. Here it really just felt lazy. All in all, it's a gorgeous piece of prose that lacks the substance it needs to be a true winner.
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- Hallie
- 01-15-25
sisters aren't always great
Prefacing this with the fact I have not read King Lear.
However, I really enjoyed this book. I think it captures growing up with sisters you love, but weren't particularly close to. How you feel loyal and connected to them, and yet can't quite bridge your gaps. I think the commentary of your family holding you to a past-you standard when everyone else knows the now-you is genius as well.
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- Shayne
- 01-28-25
Narration and writing was absolutely beautiful
This is one I wish I had read instead of listened to. Except it was such a beautiful listen. I think I missed a lot that I would have caught by reading.
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- Amybooksit
- 12-21-24
Outstanding ending
The first half had me concerned but the ending made the initial trudge well worth it
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- Betsy
- 12-15-24
Confusing
Terrible ending- completely confused. The story finally wraps up with 6 minutes remaining- and introduces a completely unfamiliar story line.
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- C. Stachnik
- 02-25-25
Never a sunshine, how is it possible to have so much bad weather
I found this very sad and depressing. Too much focus on the weather and water.
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