
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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Story
It’s 1995, and Alex Dean has it all: a spot at Cambridge University next year, the love of an amazing woman named Holly and all the time in the world ahead of him. That is until a brutal encounter with a ghost from his past sees him beaten, battered and almost drowning in the Thames. He wakes the next day to find he’s in a messy, derelict room he’s never seen before, in grimy clothes he doesn’t recognize, with no idea of how he got there. A glimpse in the mirror tells him he’s older—much older—and has been living a hard life, his features ravaged by time and poor decisions.
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Can you change your life?
- By Lynda Engler on 12-19-24
By: James Goodhand
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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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Our Wives Under the Sea
- By: Julia Armfield
- Narrated by: Annabel Baldwin, Robyn Holdaway
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Leah is changed. Months earlier, she left for a routine expedition, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.
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Has stayed with me…
- By Maryanne T. on 10-05-22
By: Julia Armfield
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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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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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Sacrificial Animals
- A Novel
- By: Kailee Pedersen
- Narrated by: Yung-I Chang
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that loomed so large in memory, forever. But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, can ignore such summons from their father, who hopes for a deathbed reconciliation. Predictably, Joshua and Carlyle quickly warm to each other while Nick and Emilia are left to their own devices.
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this book is 10/10
- By Mewt on 01-23-25
By: Kailee Pedersen
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Godshot
- A Novel
- By: Chelsea Bieker
- Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen-year-old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it's an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret "assignments," to bring the rain everybody is praying for.
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flawless novel, not the best narration
- By Adrienne on 05-05-20
By: Chelsea Bieker
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Wolf at the Table
- By: Adam Rapp
- Narrated by: Paul Sparks
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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As late summer 1951 descends on Elmira, New York, Myra Larkin, thirteen, the oldest child of a large Catholic family, meets a young man she believes to be Mickey Mantle. He chats her up at a local diner and gives her a ride home. The matter consumes her until later that night, when a triple homicide occurs just down the street, opening a specter of violence that will haunt the Larkins for half a century.
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extraordinary writing.
- By michelle martinez on 05-23-24
By: Adam Rapp
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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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10:04
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In the last year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child, despite his dating a rising star in the visual arts. In a New York of increasingly frequent super storms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water.
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A novel worth reading
- By Bradley Paul Valentine on 01-29-15
By: Ben Lerner
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Meet Me at the Museum
- A Novel
- 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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Praiseworthy
- By: Alexis Wright
- Narrated by: Jacqui Katona
- Length: 36 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In a small town in the north of Australia, a mysterious cloud heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors. A crazed visionary looks to donkeys to solve the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife, seeking solace from his madness, follows the dance of butterflies and scours the internet to find out how her Aboriginal/Chinese family could be repatriated to China. One of their sons, named Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide.
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Beautiful, powerful book full of poetry
- By Guy on 11-11-24
By: Alexis Wright
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Gods of Howl Mountain
- By: Taylor Brown
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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In Gods of Howl Mountain, award-winning author Taylor Brown explores a world of folk healers, whiskey-runners, and dark family secrets in the high country of 1950s North Carolina. Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home to the fabled mountain of his childhood - a misty wilderness that holds its secrets close and keeps the outside world at gunpoint. Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted 1940 Ford coupe.
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Appalatia Noir
- By meanwhile on 09-18-18
By: Taylor Brown
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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
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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