My Phantoms

Author(s): Gwendoline Riley

Location(s): England

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): Contemporary

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 flare 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 fein 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.

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