4.5 rounded up

My first Gwendoline Riley novel, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect from My Phantoms - the early reviews led me to expect something impressive, but I wasn't quite prepared for the hefty emotional punch this slight novel packed.

Bridget is our narrator, but she is someone we only glean snippets of information about through her interactions with others. I took the "phantoms" of the title to be that of her parents, given what we learn about her relationship with them: they come across as two people who seem to have their own complex issues, with this indicated through Bridget's direct interactions with them, but it is also alluded to that her mother, Hen, had a fraught marriage with Bridget's father, which was quite likely abusive. I suppose equally Hen, too, is haunted by her own phantoms - the life she believes she deserves to have, and is not quite what she feels she has been promised (but, as Bridget says: promised by who?).

It is clear from Bridget's interactions with her mother that they have never really seen eye to eye, and Bridget's struggles to communicate with her mother seem to stem from her mother's uncertainty of her own self; with Bridget's partner, John, being a therapist, she is able to see this perhaps more clearly than others might. What makes this novel work so well is the way Riley deftly insets the reader into Bridget's head. As a reader I felt her frustrations with her mother deeply. Some may consider that her attitude towards Hen is at times petulant and callous, but it is clear that Hen herself has much unresolved trauma, making her a difficult person to be around and to have a genuine relationship with. The way their relationship is written makes it feel wholly real, and is brilliantly evoked through their interactions and conversations.

Not a light read, but still highly recommended.

Oh what a depressing book ‘My Phantoms’ by Gwendoline Riley was. Having said that I really enjoyed her style of writing. I presume the style was intentional to emphasise the relationship between mother and daughter but I just didn’t like the characters.

Gwendoline Riley's work has become richer in the past few years, and this book feels like a further development of the fascination with first person that we saw in her previous novel, First Love. I finished this novel in about three hours — I was half-way through without even realising it — but the ending and the emotions it evokes are still resonating with me.

My Phantoms is mostly a playing out of the relationship between a woman called Bridget and Hen, her strange, neurotic mother, but told through the former's first-person perspective. At the same time, we see the arc of the mother's life in an almost objective way. The narrative is so deftly constructed that we don't question why the narrator would want to show us this arc - most of the seemingly significant events of the mother's life aren't shown or happened long before the present of the novel. In fact, we spend the first fifth of the novel meeting Bridget's father. Riley almost experientially creates him - he's exhausting, a bully, his forced good humour always threatening to tip into something more sinister. There are hints later on that Hen suffered greatly, but we never see her parents together in the course of the novel or learn much about him from Hen herself.

Instead, we get to see the repercussions of the mother's upbringing and choices through her interactions with Bridget – most notably, an excruciating annual birthday meeting where they struggle to accommodate each other. In a talk, Riley said (to paraphrase really badly) that the two women represent the difference between unhappiness and unhappiness. Bridget is happy with her life and relationship; her mother is deeply disappointed at everyone around her and unable to form any friendships that aren't purely functional. The disappointment further manifests through her relentless, frantic involvement in local societies (where she rejects everyone before they reject her) and her antagonistic friendship with Griff, a self-involved man. For me, this opposition takes the novel beyond the mother and daughter dynamics, though there is a lot of comedy wrung out of the generational differences - the mother's discomfort with vegan food, for example, and her oppressive love of cliches ('if you remember the sixties, you weren't there!')

I felt like Bridget's contentment was believable, but Riley is also good at conquering that notion that people who are able to be content are somehow morally superior. Bridget really struggles with not antagonising her mother who emerges as quite a sad, vulnerable character in the end. This constant self-restraint/withholding by Bridget is depicted so well - the tiring holding-back of anything positive in her own life, for fear of upsetting her mother or drawing attention to the latter's empty life. In holding back, she exacerbates her mother's sense of exclusion - so who is at fault here? I think that Riley perfectly captures the dilemma - these people are how they are, unable to escape their own identities and suffering because they're inextricably connected and formed by each other. My Phantoms' power, for me, comes from the way that there can be no conclusion to this dynamic or shared happiness in each other's company.

The only puzzling note was the assessment of Bridget's partner John, an analyst, on meeting Bridget's mother - he says that she exists in a different reality and she can't acknowledge anyone else's for fear of disturbing her own. I feel like this view of Hen is supposed to be entirely persuasive, and it seems strange for the novel to give that moment to quite a peripheral character, as if the novelist herself is swayed by the clinical coldness of the judgement (despite all the novel's work in showing us how complex these lifelong relationships can be). There are many moments in the book where we can see that some of the mother's responses to Bridget and other people are justifiable or, at least, understandable. But we're not given any reason to doubt John, who appears to be a good influence in her life, the little we see of him — although perhaps there is something sly in the role of psychoanalysis and Bridget's concomitant metropolitan perfection (she has to feel totally comfortable with the decor of a cafe, she gifts her mother the Ferrante novels so they'll have something to talk about). But I also feel that it's a note that the novel can't be without, for whatever reason, given that it's about the impossibility of escaping one's own viewpoint. I guess that's what an analyst offers — an 'objective' judgement.

I want to add that Riley does all of this with a lightness of touch that is masterful! Although I'm not convinced that the novel is 'hilarious' (or maybe it is in a literary, dry chuckle way). That's not a negative - it's really deft and easy to read.

It's a powerful novel and I feel really rattled about its conclusions (or non-conclusions), and trying to work out how the relationship could have been different, and experiencing its frustration in a deep way, and being thankful that someone so wise could have depicted that dilemma in such a truthful manner

*BOOK REVIEW*

‘My Phantoms’ by Gwendoline Riley. (SWIPE 👉🏾)

This is my first foray into the world of Gwendoline Riley and it certainly won’t be the last! In ‘My Phantoms’, Helen (The Mother) is dying and this book explores whether she is able to make peace with her daughter (Bridget) before the end. Their complex mother/daughter relationship is tackled brilliantly in a way I haven’t seen before. Helen is also laugh out loud funny. She reminded me a-lot of Eleanor in “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.”

An example of Bridget’s mother in verbal action. (She’s just started volunteering) “Was that interesting?’ I asked. “God no,’ she said, ‘Dead boring’ ‘How’s that?’ “It just is’ she said. ‘You stuff envelopes for four hours and they give you two biscuits. It’s slave labour! ‘Oh dear Weirdos?’ ‘Mmm, sort of ‘eccentrics. You can see why they don’t have friends,. I mean, you can see why they’re volunteering’ ‘So are you going to stop that?’’ Oh no’ she said.

Her marriage to her husband - (Bridget’s father) was short lived. And when you meet her father, you understand why these two catastrophically ill-suited people, never worked.

(Father) ‘You do know there’s no point in reading things in a translation’ he said. ‘Intelligent people learn the language if they’re really interested. What you’re reading could be anything’. (Bridget’) I didn’t have much to say to this. I looked out the window..’ (Father) ‘Hello? He said. ’Is somebody sulking back there?’ he said chuckling. ‘She’s sulking’ he trilled. (Bridget continues to ignore father). “How’s your ring Bridget? Is it itchy? I’ve been meaning to ask you if your worms had come back? Do you think Madame (speaking in his la-di-da voice now, ‘might find some time when she’s not posing with Russian books to put some cream on her itchy ring”

The dialogue is cuttingly pitch perfect, from both the mother and father. Both parents are as utterly bonkers as each other. By the end I was sobbing because just like Eleanor, behind the cracks, they’re not at all fine.

With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

This short understated novel makes for uncomfortable reading in its exploration of a dysfunctional parent-child relationship.

Narrated by Bridget, one of two sisters, it starts with her account of her father, an unpleasant, narcissistic man-child with a staggering inability to comprehend how he comes across to the world. The first few chapters are devoted to a character sketch of the man via the children’s weekend visits with him after their mother Helen leaves him, and I found them relentless and was starting to think they could have done with some editing. Then the narrative switches to adult Bridget’s relationship with her mother, and it becomes clearer that the portrait of her father is really there to shed some light on the sort of woman Helen is.

Helen is also quite child-like in some ways, a woman who ‘puts herself out there’, as she feels a single woman should, but seems nevertheless to have no friends or social circle. Her attachments to men are based on teenage fantasy, and she seems to take pleasure only in not finding pleasure in anything. As an adult, Bridget has distanced herself quite forcefully from all her family, and she keeps her life firmly separate. There is no contact with her father, sporadic phone calls with her sister, and an annual birthday visit when her mother comes to London but is pointedly never invited to stay or meet Bridget’s boyfriend. Conversations are fraught, a desperate game of meaningless deceptions in an attempt to divert the inevitable descent into misunderstandings which make Helen unhappy - but not the kind of unhappy which cheers her up.

Bridget seems to be making a decent life for herself, but can only do so by maintaining strict boundaries that don’t allow the childhood relationship dynamic with her parents in. I had a great deal of sympathy for her, but the failure to detach completely points to an element of guilt on her part too.

Much about the narrative is elliptical, and it is all the richer for it. We are invited to fill in the gaps, brining our own experiences into the mix. When Bridget’s partner, an analyst, finally gets to meet Helen, his assessment is that he has never met anyone quite so unwilling or afraid to engage on any level. Helen is a woman who spends her life bewildered by why it hasn’t turned out right when she did everything she was supposed to, with a completely childlike sense of unfairness. But really, what she has never done is had a proper two-way relationship. It’s a desperately sad tale of emotional lack of development, and we probably all know someone far too much like her for comfort.

So I wouldn’t say this was a pleasure to read by any means, but it is extremely well done for all that, and deserves a few hours of your time.

Gwendoline Riley deals with complex family relationships in this beautifully written novel. The novel is narrated by Bridget who is in her forties and lives with her partner John. But the novel isn’t about her relationship with John it concentrates on her troubled relationship with her mum Helen, known as Hen, who is twice divorced and now lives alone. Bridget also had an equally dysfunctional relationship with her over bearing father Lee, a narcissist who appears to feel threatened by the intellect of his daughter and takes every opportunity to prove how clever and well connected he is. This results in a number of uncomfortable and often amusing situations.
Her mother, Hen, is selfish and fickle and, although Hen tries to fit in, she seems unable to connect with people and always remains an outsider. She doesn’t even appear to connect with her daughters. All that we learn about Hen is from Bridget’s point of view and therefore may be tainted.
An elegantly written uncompromising analysis of a troubled family relationship.

Gwendoline Riley has many gifts as a writer, but I think the most obvious – showcased both in her most recent book, My Phantoms, and her previous one, First Love – is the way she composes dialogue. I can’t think of another writer who nails so precisely how we actually speak, with all of its redundancies, embarrassing repetitions and pointless exclamations. The narrator of My Phantoms, Bridget, is also acutely aware of how even the most throwaway comment might be interpreted, at least when she’s talking to her mother, Hen, which adds an extra layer of self-reflection. Here she is talking to Hen about a drinks party:

“I got stuck with a really boring woman for about ten minutes,” I said.

“Oh no!” my mother said.

“So typical,” I said, “in a room full of interesting people.”

That was a slip-up. I knew it as soon as I’d said it.

“Mmm,” she said, bravely.

I tried to get her back: “The dreadful thing is, I think she felt she’d got stuck with me, too! But neither of us had the wherewithal to break it off.”

“Aargh!” said my mother.

And encouraged, I went on, “I think it’s worse when you feel you’re the boring one!” I said. But there again, that was wrong; I’d given the impression now of such a party-rich life that I could make generalisations.

Bridget tells us almost nothing about herself; the focus of this novella is on character portraits of her parents, her unbearably awful father (whose constant badgering of her when she was a child gives us some idea of why she may have withdrawn so far into herself) and the much more complicated Hen, who is always striving for something brighter and better at the same time as she trips herself up. Hen’s life is the real centre of this story, and the final glimpse of her we get is unbearably sad.

Other reviewers have noted that Bridget’s effacement of herself from the narrative doesn’t mean that we should think of her as unselfish, pointing out that she outsources caring responsibilities to her sister Michelle as Hen gets older, and seems unreasonably opposed to Hen meeting her boyfriend. However, I think Riley leaves Bridget’s motivations deliberately open. She is far estranged not only from her parents but from Michelle, and there seems to be a great deal she doesn’t say about her childhood. And while she is capable of deliberately baiting and upsetting her mother (for example, subtly noting the inconvenience of having dinner with Hen on her actual birthday, because the weather’s always cold and wet) we also see how hard she tries to make pleasant conversation. This kind of watchfulness made me reflect back on what Bridget experienced while she was growing up, as it felt like the kind of learnt behaviour that emerges from an abusive environment. None of these characters are easy to read, but that’s why this novella is so good.

Do not be deceived by this novel. It is very slim, like Riley’s other works, but has more depth than works five times its length.

My Phantoms is spectacular. It is a slicing analysis of a mother-daughter relationship, that makes for compelling yet uncomfortable reading.

There is a breathtaking economy about Riley’s prose that packs so much into such a tiny space, yet it is not laboured or clever-clever. It is just-enough and is chronically readable. I tore through it, whilst all the time knowing that I would regret getting to the end so quickly.

If you prefer books that tell rather than show, shout and point rather than suggest and hint, then this novel is not for you. But you are missing out on what will be one of the novels of 2021.

This book made me want to call my mum.

It’s a short, quiet and somewhat painful read about a Mother and daughter.

I’m not sure if I was meant to find the narrator likeable, and maybe I would have felt different reading this in my twenties than I did in my thirties, but I found myself feeling desperately sad for the mother and feeling the daughter was at times unnecessarily cruel. But I also recognise this behaviour in myself so perhaps this just provided a mirror for me:

It was a short and beautiful book. I love the mundane details of places - particularly the detail of Manchester as the mother’s flat is exactly where I used to live so I loved remembering the Spar and the Sainsburys near my old flat!

I finished this book feeling sad but it made me appreciate my Mum, and I know the complex relationship between mothers and daughters well and this was honestly completely spot on.

4 stars

I found this book difficult to settle into, especially when I came across contrived sentences such as: 'A living witness was required for the attitudes of this self-pollinating entity'. After getting such early difficulties out of the way, the writing was excellent. I loved the description of days out with the narrator's pompous know-all father. However, as I got further into the narrative about her relationship with her mother, I just couldn't get engrossed and gave up about half way through. Looking at other excellent reviews, I acknowledge that this is no fault of the author; it is due to my personal response to this kind of narrative..

I really liked the exploration of the toxic mother-daughter relationship and thought this was really strongly evoked, but ultimately the lack of linear narrative made me less able to engage with this than I would have liked to. Thanks so much to Granta for letting me read it, and I'm still intrigued to pick up another Gwendoline Riley novel as her talent isn't in doubt.

This is a very powerful and detailed examination of the bizarre behaviour and personality of Bridget's father and her mother, and her relationship with them. I found it totally absorbing. This must be partly autobiographical - it is difficult to believe that that amount of detail is made up. Bridget tries to understand her mother but is met by a brick wall every time she thinks she is getting through.The dynamic between Bridget and Michelle, her sister, is not explored much - they are not close and may even have a different view of their parents. There are some great supporting characters, Joe, Griff, Dave etc. and there are some very funny moments.

I read a couple of Riley's books in the mid-2000's and really enjoyed her. I felt she really put a voice to a lot of the listlessness of our generation at that time, directionless and introspective, feeling as if life were not what we had been promised as children. Coming to her latest novel when we've both made our way through early adulthood and into maturity, I still feel that she has that ability to capture so much of being our age in our time.

This is the story of Bridget and her mother Helen, and the story of their fraught relationship. Helen is a twice-divorced, lonely woman, seemingly desperate for connection with others but who is conflicted and difficult to get close to. Bridget keeps her mother at mother at arms' length and they see one another just once a year. Bridget glances into moments of her childhood and her mother's past; her parent's relationship and the odd parental visitation she and her sister had with her father after the divorce; her mother's attempts to find love and her disastrous second marriage. She reflects on all these, as her mother becomes ill and the dynamic of their relationship is forced into a new shape.

Much like her earlier books, this is an introspective character driven story with a narrator who is as flawed as she is relatable. A woman who is trying to put distance between painful parts of her childhood and her mother's erratic and difficult view of the world, Bridget could either be empathised with or scrutinised. She is at turns cold and unkind in her thoughts and dealings with her mother, so that even in this one-sided view of their relationship you question how much of the fracture is really down to her mother alone. I thought it was so interesting, and wanted to know even more than this book gave me - it's kept me thinking since I read it, about how we perceive our own relationships, and whether it is self-preservation or an almost cruel detachment that makes Bridget hold her mother to apart from herself.

A fascinating book which has definitely made me want to dive in to all of Riley's intervening works published since I last read her.

What an amazing book. A dysfunctional family is examined, but the main relationship is between the daughter (narrator) and her mother. The novel is both darkly humorous and achingly sad. The dialogue perfectly captures the nuances and shifts in a relationship that is never fully realised, and where each is unwilling to fully participate. Highly recommended.

A mother daughter relationship so well written so real.I followed Briigette the daughter and Hens relationships in all its difficulty all its drama the disconnection,Each character so well drawn I became immediately involved with the family the Dad the sisters and the stars of the story the mother and daughter.An author whose books Inlok forward to and will be recommending.#netgalley #grantabooks

I was a huge fan of Riley’s novel First Love and I have foisted it upon countless friends and customers alike. I have been very much looking forward to reading more of her work so I was delighted when I saw My Phantoms was available to request.

I am both happy and relieved to report that this novel did not disappoint. It is quite similar in tone to First Love and if you enjoyed that novel as much as I did, you will be enthralled by My Phantoms. Neither novel is necessarily plot driven but Riley’s writing is exceptional. Ice cold humour runs through both and I loved her characterisation of Bridget’s parents, who really do feel like ‘real’ people. Overall, this was a quick read, but a remarkable one.

Riley's best novel, I think, uncomfortably funny and poignant and featuring typically excellent dialogue and deeply complex characters with just the wrong combination of self-perception and neuroses. The closest comparison is probably Mike Leigh -- both seem equally repelled by and attracted to their players.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance reading copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

My Phantoms is about the difficult relationship between a mother and daughter. We never learn much about the daughter, but this works well as the mother never asks much about her daughters life or seems particularly interested in it. Throughout the book, Riley manages to convey a sense of discomfort whenever they interact with each other, which is impressive and made reading it a very immersive experience.

I loved First Love, but Gwendoline Riley's follow up My Phantoms is even better. The ostensibly simple story of an antagonistic relationship between a daughter and her mother, My Phantoms captures the pain, joy and day to day grind of maintaining familial relationships. It is both horrifying and deathly funny with a real emotional depth and has a final paragraph that will rip your heart out. Highly recommended.

Gwendoline Riley is just fantastic when it comes to challenging the reader to ponder complex human relationships (see First Love, nominated for the Women's Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, etc. pp.). In "My Phantoms", she tells the story of Bridget and her mother Helen a.k.a. Hen, and by framing their relationship wholly from Bridget's perspective, one starts to wonder in how far the mother's personal traits and the events portrayed are tainted by the daughter's limited perspective, personal resentments and own flawed personality. We witness these two wrestling each other and it becomes impossible to take sides - and it's this oscillation, the thin ice on which we have to draw our conclusions that gives the text suspense and renders it so intriguing.

While Bridget lives with her boyfriend John (who hardly features), her twice-divorced mother lives alone, always trying to immerse herself in the life around her, trying to fit in and do everything right without really opening up, only to become bitter when her perceived conformism doesn't lead to success - at least that's Bridget's perspective, and it's not necessarily correct, especially as Bridget could be interpreted as cold and condescending. But then again, we do not know everything that happened in these women's past, so we don't know what pain the mother inflicted on her daughter. As Hen ages, Bridget and her sister are forced to come to terms with the new situation and its demands.

In large parts, this book is very sad and depressing (not necessarily a bad thing, literature is not here to cheer us up), but the aspect of the text being an emotional riddle - as ultimately are many human relationships - made it unputdownable for me and I read it in one sitting. I hope Riley's challenging and innovative work will once again make some prize lists.