This book wasn’t for me.
I really didn’t like the writing style. I also couldn’t warm to the characters or the story
Not to my taste

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I loved this book. Gwendoline Riley’s novel deals with grief, complicated emotions between parents and children, and the struggle that feelings of responsibility can bring. In the novel, her mother’s impending death causes Bridget to confront—with some resentment—the fractured relationship the pair have with each other. We are left somewhat sympathetic towards Bridget, despite her frequently awkward tone and dismissive attitudes towards her mother. The reader remains aware nonetheless, that in this first-person narrative, there is perhaps only one side of the story really being told.

An adult daughter has a fraught relationship with her mother and spends much of the book giving examples of her unreasonable behaviour. Behaviour which seems all too human and vulnerable to this reader.

Bridget has always struggled to bond with her mother (and with her sister as it happens). In adulthood, she cannot see her mother as a fellow human being, with unmet needs and putting a brave face on her essential loneliness.

This book just didn’t appeal to me at all. Bridget’s narrative is mean-minded and there is little in the way of humour or warmth in the story. The book may be relatively short but I still wanted to skip pages of this unentertaining work.

Gwendoline Riley is one heck of a talented author, My Phantoms should have won all the awards this year. The tension in this book had me wound so tight I nearly chocked. I can't wait to see what Gwendoline writes next.

Not for the faint of heart. As always Riley pulls no punches in the raw, captivating short book about a mother/daughter relationship. Outstanding as always.

Brilliantly written, with just the right level of detachment but also undercurrents of resentment. However, I did not find the mother-daughter relationship quite as claustrophobic or nasty as other readers had warned me: meeting a mother in a restaurant just once a year is hardly ego-shattering (for more than a couple of days, at least).

My Phantoms by Gwnedoline Riley is about complicated relationships. Bridget - our protagonist - takes you on a journey through her life and shows us how bring related doesn't mean you actually have to like your family. Her paternal relationship is tenuous due to an egotistical father who doesn't like to hear he is wrong yet feels threatened by his daughters intelligence. Bridget's maternal relationship is not much better but strangely it feels like Bridget is trying so hard to not become her mother - who you get the impression she feels embarrassed by that she didn't realise she was slowly turning into her father.

My Phantoms is very much a character driven novel with very little actually happening in the way of story but if you love the intricate lives of characters then this is the book for you.

My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley is available now.
For more information regarding Granta Publications (@GrantaBooks) please visit www.granta.com.

This is the fourth novel I've read by Gwendoline Riley, and while I thought nothing would top First Love, My Phantoms has come along and blown it out the water. I think it’s exquisite. I’m also not entirely convinced she hasn’t met my mother.

I always find it hard to like a book with such an unlikable core character. The whole book is Bridget's recollection of her mother, focusing on her memories of their dysfunctional relationship. It was interesting how the author chose to describe the mother through her daughters singular perception, and I commend the effort. However I would love to have learnt more about Bridget and how this kind of mother has shaped her, or even her sister. Instead the focus was on this weird parody of a person, and much less about a story. In a nutshell, this book wasn't for me.

This was a dark tale that was compulsively readable. Really engaging but perhaps not a summer read. Highly recommended.

Fairly short book exploring the complexities of the relationship between mother and daughter. I loved Riley's writing style - very stripped back and cuts to the bone. Not very plot heavy, very literary in style. Really enjoyed it.

The subtleties of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship are captured perfectly is this book, with Riley encapsulating all the frustration that builds from the unsaid in insightful accuracy.

Bridget successfully separates herself from her more overtly narcissistic father but is unable to break the ties she has with her equally narcissistic but more covert and dependant mother. I think the responsibility she feels towards her mother is beautifully depicted and the role of parent she plays to her mother long before her physical illness becomes apparent is often painful to read.

The way Riley manages to capture the empty hole Bridget is left with as she never gets the acknowledgement, affirmation or significance that should be a fundamental aspect of motherly love is heartbreaking. A profound example of this is when her mother is too distracted by the anticipated arrival of a friend to spend time getting to know John, Bridget's boyfriend, despite having guilt-tripped Bridget into allowing them to meet.

This is an intelligent look at family relationships which showing insidious damage with wise, empathic perception.

Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved this - and it certainly lived up to my expectations, and the extremely positive reviews I have read about it.

'My Phantoms' is told from Bridget's point of view. Initially, one is immersed into the life of Bridget, along with her sister, Michelle, and their father - someone who is bullish and ignorant, seemingly. From the outset, I was a little surprised, thinking I'd be right into the intricacies of Bridget's life with her mother - but this follows shortly after.

It is difficult to explain the story - essentially, it is about Bridget's relationship with her mother, Helen ('Hen') - and what makes this so good is the dialogue, the mundanity of everyday lives and the fact that Hen doesn't really seem to know what she wants in life. Her responses to Bridget's questions are brilliant - often empty, and suggest disinterest, but this is how life is, quite often, and Riley has captured this beautifully.

'My Phantoms' is funny and unmistakably British, I feel, but there is a tragic element to the story, too, particularly towards the end, and the scene when Hen cries, not understanding what she has done wrong as she believes she's done everything right.

One final point: I was a little put off by the front cover - don't be! I know the old adage about not judging etc but this is often quite difficult! As soon as you start reading, you'll see how fantastically crafted this is.

A wonderfully poisonous novel which really nails all the pain that can be contained in dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships, where separation is never really possible and where that inescapable bond is also a kind of stranglehold.

This seems deceptively simple in writing style at first, but the book cleverly uses a limited first person perspective, inviting readers to think about both Bridget's obsession with her mother, and all the things she never says but which underlie her vexed and troubled relationships with both parents, the 'phantoms' of the title who haunt her psyche.

Riley is brutal in her exposure of these women and the way they lacerate each other while never acknowledging the bitterness and resentments between them. Read this alongside Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi for another disturbed tale of maternal bonds gone awry. For all the cool surface, this book packs a huge emotional punch.

I really loved the writing style, the whole feel of this story, following Bridget as her mother is dying. A book about a somewhat dysfunctional family- showcasing the highs and the lows, the dynamics of the relationships and bonds within, this really hit home with me.

One of my favourite poems has always been Larkin's 'This be the verse'. This book is like a novella-length exploration of all the ways your parents can affect you, and how this isn't something you can necessarily get closure about, or even get over. The narrator, Bridget, has always had a difficult relationship with her mother (who clearly suffers from narcissistic personality disorder). It's a tightly wound account of her meetings with her mother, as she ages, and Bridget's efforts to make sure the infrequent meetings are not fraught with tension. It's not always easy to achieve, and the writer captures that feeling of helplessness you feel as a child, when you're doing your best, and treading on eggshells around a parent to not set them off, and the sense of resignation you get when it inevitably doesn't work out. Speaking from personal experience, the writer captures the experience extremely accurately-dealing with difficult personalities, and how the tone of the relationship changes , as you grow older and so do they. It can be very confusing as a child, when your parent doesn't really fulfil the part of caregiver, role model, as they're supposed to. Not everyone wants to be a parent, and some parents make that amply clear-that the child was born to fulfil the demands of society, and that the parent resents their role, in a way. It manifests in different ways, and while your basic needs of food, clothing and shelter are met, this experience leaves its invisible scars and lingering resentments. The writer captures this so acutely, that I had to set the book aside a few times just to draw a few deep breaths and reassure myself that I was an adult and things were much better now! I loved this book and tore through in one sitting. Hugely recommended, and I want to read all this author's other books as well. Recommended for fans of Vivian Gornick's 'Fierce Attachments' and Edward St.Aubyn's Melrose books.

This is an unsettling novel and one I read not so much with enjoyment (although Riley’s words are beautiful) but with a creeping sense of discomfort. Bridget is not a sympathetic narrator and holds the reader at a distance as she recounts details of her past and present relationship with her mother, Hen.
Communication is impossible between them. There’s little warmth. They miss each other by miles. If you’re expecting rapprochement when Bridget reluctantly takes a turn at familial duty when Hen is unwell – think again. Instead, we get excruciating days of Bridget hiding in her room and taking sneaky trips to cafes in order to get away from her mother.
Bridget’s gaze is rarely on herself. Trying to work out why she’s so lacking in compassion and self-awareness is left to the reader and this is the subtlety of the novel. Why so pitiless towards your mother, Bridget? Why so remote? Why paint Hen in such a ghastly light? There are clues in the past – her relationship with her father, for instance - but they are never fully explored and I found this to be a strength of the book. Riley leaves plenty of space for the reader.
This is a subtle and wryly humorous novel. But it is also devastating.

<i>"She was even more cheerful later on that night when she told me how a woman in her aerobics class had died."</i>

Well, I thought this was absolutely brilliant.

I read the extract of the father chapter that appeared in <a href="https://granta.com/my-phantoms/">Granta</a>, and THAT, more than anything, is what got me hooked. It is a just plain brilliant piece of writing, an absolutely searing character portrayal of a pathetic David Brent-like man. Just... totally brutal. I think it was the book snatching that really got me, and the pinching. Just... unforgettable. I think any creative writing student would benefit from reading that excerpt.

<i>I remember thinking it would have been better if she'd had a wrong number for me, or if I'd given her a number to a phone I never looked at.</i>

The novel overall focuses more on the narrator's relationship with the mother, who is more... umm... I don't know if "sympathetic" is the right word. "Likeable" definitely isn't either. But it was SO fascinating to read. SO, so British, in terms of how often <i>"Oh, dear,"</i> is used. For me, this book iswaslike a fascinating anthropological case study of a very particular kind of Britishness, in which things are NOT SAID.

<i>I think she liked finding life a little bit crap. It encouraged her, in a way. 'Boring' films, 'crap' exhibitions, 'mad' people, these she could happily talk about. This was a world she could be part of.</i>

The use of humour in this... I just found it SO painfully funny. So many painful scenes of agonising social comedy. Like mother's obsession with Bridget's boyfriend, about how they're ever introduced, and then when they finally DO meet, she ignores him. So many sly little digs. Mother: <i>That's just, you know, life as an older woman. You've got all that to come, lucky you!</i> There's the constant Jungian question about if the mother's whole persona is exactly that - a persona, a performance. And if what actually lurks underneath is too painful to be exposed.

I found the narrator really sympathetic, actually. Yes, she's cold to her mother, but for me I was like... BOUNDARIES! The moment she asked, <i>Is there anything to drink around here</i> - boy, I felt that. It's brutal, though, especially when a parent gets sick. This book is an interesting counterpoint to <i>Burnt Sugar</i>, which explored similar questions.

Overall, I thought this was just masterful. Scathing, sharp writing, and just absolutely brilliant depictions of characters. Thanks to Granta and Netgalley for the ARC.

My Phantoms explores toxic parent/child relationships with the dark humour and poignancy seen in the author's previous novels.

Bridget is a 40 something academic living in London. Her relationship with her recently deceased father is revealed through her memories of the uncomfortable access visits following the breakdown of her parents marriage. She is semi-estranged from her mother, meeting annually for a birthday meal at which neither are at ease or able to truly communicate. The well written dialogue captures their awkward negotiations as to the boundaries of their present and future relationship.

Riley's novels may be short but every word is impeccably placed for devastating impact. I devoured this book in one sitting.