A review by will_gowling
Private Rites by Julia Armfield

4.5

I started off disliking this quite a bit, and honestly have no idea what happened at the end, but somehow just got completely swept away by it? The idea of an apocalypse occurring when you're in the midst of a personal crisis, casually pulling your city into the sea as you attempt to deal with issues relating to sibling rivalries, grief, relationships, sex is just such a fascinating idea, and the imagery and writing that Armfield delivers this with is just stunning. It reminded me a lot of Sally Rooney's famous chapter in Beautiful World, Where Are You? where she writes about how beautiful it is that the world came to an end because we were all too busy loving each other too much - this is a novel that proves that, yes, Armageddon does look a lot like a personal crisis on a super-scale, but also that our ignorance to it can be both a traffic and beautiful thing. The creepy elements of the gothic and the occult were a fabulous little touch as well.