My Phantoms

Author: Gwendoline Riley

Stock information

General Fields

  • : 27.99 AUD
  • : 9781783783267
  • : Granta Books
  • : Granta Books
  • :
  • :
  • : December 2020
  • :
  • : 27.99
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

  • :
  • :
  • : Gwendoline Riley
  • :
  • : Hardback
  • : 2105
  • :
  • : English
  • : 823.92
  • :
  • :
  • : 208
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
Barcode 9781783783267
9781783783267

Local Description

Matilda Bookshop Review
 
Here is another absolute gem from the queen of taut and terse writing. Casting her crystalline gaze to an entangled mother and daughter relationship, Riley flays open domestic realms and the inner worlds of her characters with wit, perceptiveness and acute observation. The relationships and physical spaces of the novel are claustrophobic in intensity, yet the writing is so snappy that you’ll sail through. This is a very fine portrait of a complex interdependence, all unfolding in the industrial suburbs of Liverpool. A luminous read. Molly

 

Description

From the novelist hailed as one of Britain's best working authors (TLS) comes an end of life reckoning with a toxic mother-daughter bond, grief, and the damage done throughout the years.

Helen Grant is a mystery to her two daughters. Growing up, Bridget and her older sister Michelle were kept at a distance by their mom's caginess and flair for the dramatic. Meanwhile, their Saturdays were spent with their father, a serial liar whose boasts and bluster were exhausting.

Now Bridget is an academic in her forties. She sees her mother once a year for a shared birthday dinner, they text occasionally about Mad Men and Ferrante to feign a shared interest, and they have settled into a strained peace. But when Helen makes it clear that she wants more, it seems Bridget's childhood struggle will have to be replayed. And as it becomes clear that her mother's life might end sooner than she thinks, Bridget struggles to know what forgiveness entails, and whether it's possible to find meaning in a vanishing past and a relationship that never was.