My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley

[holyzombiejesus]

Anyone else read this? I'm quite late to the party as it's already been praised to the heavens, especially by Andy Miller who says it's the best British book of the last 20 years or something.
It's quite a slight novel ostensibly about the narrator's relationship with her mum and dad. It's very funny in places - won't look at Derek Hatton again without fist-puming and saying Go Deggsy! - and I think it would reward repeat readings. The prose absolutely crackles in places. Really recommend it.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Yes, I read it all in one sitting! I think he's right, it's a wonderful book.

[holyzombiejesus]

I did

Yes, I read it all in one sitting! I think he's right, it's a wonderful book.

I did too, long foggy bus ride.

I'd got a bit bored with Riley's schtick but this was so good and it made me appreciate the older stuff more. Miller talks about it on some Radio 4 book programme and he says that whilst she has a rather narrow thematic range, it's interesting how she revisits those themes and subjects and how they change.

I hung around with the same people as GR when she lived in Manchester and me and my mate were besotted. She NEVER smiled! I can remember trying so hard to impress her on the few occasions we met and I will have done quite the opposite. Dread reading one of her books and there being a tedious wanker who loves The Pastels in it. (Actually, that gives me a good idea for a thread.)

[wrec]

I loved this. It's absolutely brutal. Family relationships reduced to repeated patterns of platitudes and passive-aggressiveness, lives of desolation and disappointment built around shallow, unsatisfying friendships of convenience and unfulfilling pastimes: it feels like very commonplace stuff that I haven't seen tackled elsewhere, and much of it felt (thankfully only partially) familiar to me.  I've known a few women with similarly bewilderingly competitive mothers. But the general family dysfunction struck me as very English in character somehow - e.g. deep emotional cracks papered over by shallow breeziness - does that make sense?

I read First Love after that, and the horrible fathers are tellingly similar in both books.

I like writers who find their theme and do the same thing repeatedly with minor variations. She reminds me of Anita Brookner in this and other ways.