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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really enjoyed this book even though nothing really happens in the traditional sense. My Phantoms quietly recounts the narrator's past, focusing on her fractured relationships with both parents following their divorce. Both relationships are deeply dysfunctional, her father is absent and unreliable, her mother needy and manipulative, leaving the narrator caught between two forms of emotional neglect.
What makes this compelling is how Riley positions her narrator as this silent observer, someone who watches and comments on the strange dance of family dysfunction without ever really participating in it. She's analysing what it means to be a daughter when your parents are essentially strangers, what it means to potentially become a mother when you have no real template for healthy relationships, and ultimately what it means to be a person when your closest connections feel more like performances than genuine intimacy.
There's something beautifully spare about Riley's prose. She captures these painful family dynamics without melodrama or sentimentality. The narrator's detachment feels like a survival mechanism, but also like a form of clarity. She sees her parents exactly as they are: flawed, self-absorbed people who happened to have a child together but never really figured out how to love her properly.
It's the kind of book that lingers because it gets at something universal about family disappointment, but does so with such precision and restraint that you find yourself thinking about it long after you've finished reading. Sometimes the most profound stories are the ones where "nothing happens" except someone finally seeing their life clearly.
I am in AWE.
Riley paints these characters with an authenticity that I think very few writers are able to achieve. I immediately recognized Bridget's parents: a woman who never truly engages with life and a man who lives entirely for the story he’ll get to tell. (They're essentially my grandparents. And I think most people could spot their own relatives in these pages!) Bridget tiptoes around their moods in each interaction, bracing herself for whatever they’ll say or do next.
It's a quiet, masterful character study and a new favorite for sure.
Riley paints these characters with an authenticity that I think very few writers are able to achieve. I immediately recognized Bridget's parents: a woman who never truly engages with life and a man who lives entirely for the story he’ll get to tell. (They're essentially my grandparents. And I think most people could spot their own relatives in these pages!) Bridget tiptoes around their moods in each interaction, bracing herself for whatever they’ll say or do next.
It's a quiet, masterful character study and a new favorite for sure.
Great novel. Very powerful rendering of a strange kind of seemingly self-inflicted loneliness, though later we learn this strange personality is a result of trauma from being abused by a husband. The mother divorces and outlives him, yet that social disability sticks with her and only compounds itself over time because the mother has no family/community to integrate into. And the daughter narrator is so interesting too, she realizes early in life that there's can be no real emotional connection with her mother and just manages the relationship coldly, from a remove. But then in those intense dialogues she's variously giving and withholding those weird anecdotes that her mother feeds on in lieu of emotion.
I think this bit of dialogue from the disinterested boyfriend John is pretty clearly the key:
‘I haven’t come across anyone quite like that before,’ he said.
He was washing up while I dried the dishes and put them away.
‘I’ve met people who are insistent, dogmatic, aggressive, but she wasn’t like that. It just quickly became obvious that she wasn’t going to engage with anything that was actually being said. She had a stance, she was sticking to that, and that precluded reacting to what was actually happening. Or experiencing what was actually happening … There was an absolute refusal to do that. It was disorienting. I see what you mean about that. When she appeared to react, these weren’t reactions at all, were they? But her performing what she thinks she is. Or what she has decided she is. So the performance was desperately committed but gratingly false.’
‘But – none of it was personal, either,’ John said, squeezing out his sponge. ‘It wasn’t to do with me or you. She’s clearly frightened of engaging. That’s a sad thing. A sad and defensive thing. Here’s a better way to put it, she was in an a priori reality. That’s what I felt. And that reality was not going to yield to another reality.’
‘The reality of reality.’
‘Well, yes. Quite.’
Accomplishes a lot in so little space. Going to be thinking about this one for a long time to come.
I think this bit of dialogue from the disinterested boyfriend John is pretty clearly the key:
Spoiler
Later, he described my mother as ‘unyielding’. I’d pushed him for a reaction, half-frightened that he’d say he couldn’t see the problem. But no, he’d seen it all right.‘I haven’t come across anyone quite like that before,’ he said.
He was washing up while I dried the dishes and put them away.
‘I’ve met people who are insistent, dogmatic, aggressive, but she wasn’t like that. It just quickly became obvious that she wasn’t going to engage with anything that was actually being said. She had a stance, she was sticking to that, and that precluded reacting to what was actually happening. Or experiencing what was actually happening … There was an absolute refusal to do that. It was disorienting. I see what you mean about that. When she appeared to react, these weren’t reactions at all, were they? But her performing what she thinks she is. Or what she has decided she is. So the performance was desperately committed but gratingly false.’
‘But – none of it was personal, either,’ John said, squeezing out his sponge. ‘It wasn’t to do with me or you. She’s clearly frightened of engaging. That’s a sad thing. A sad and defensive thing. Here’s a better way to put it, she was in an a priori reality. That’s what I felt. And that reality was not going to yield to another reality.’
‘The reality of reality.’
‘Well, yes. Quite.’
Accomplishes a lot in so little space. Going to be thinking about this one for a long time to come.
funny
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
sad
slow-paced
emotional
funny
reflective
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Mother/daughter strife, dynamic, boldly infuriating. There is so much good here. Not4me. I craved more from every character and kept waiting for it all to fall together.
How i would imagine my ex boss as an old mother… distant, anxious, out of touch with her emotions
challenging
dark
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes