Featured pic : author Angela O’Keefe
A woman buys a book at an author’s signing, before embarking to London for a week with her new boyfriend. O’Keeffe builds so much depth and interest in less than 180 pages distilling both dread and hope into her character’s interaction. There’s multi layers in this work artfully embroidering memories and family instances, considering there are so few characters that stand alone. PHANTOM DAYS is an eerie, delightful tale populated by the agency of books and the dangers that spin personal relationships.
Told partly from the perspective of a book itself, it follows Isabel from Sydney to London, where the book observes and speaks in its own birthright, noticing the perils to her life via the intransigence of her boyfriend, Lewis. As a quiet observer, the book recounts Lewis’s tragic upbringing in a family struck by horrible circumstances, but its his rage, which trickles through the narrative, is why book fears for Isabel’s life. In this quirky, memorable and unique perspective, replete with the O’Keeffe signature, that impacts the narrative’s emotional depth. Using the book and ashes as narrators is a masterful and quite relishing delivery by the author . ‘The book comes into the world knowing it is a saviour, of sorts’. And thus begins a beguiling and somewhat spellbinding novel. Upon zipping back to Sydney, Isabel accidentally leaves the book in a taxi and Lewis takes it home. It is here that book learns information concerning Lewis’s past, such that Isabel may not be safe and it, book, may need to intervene on her behalf.
The story sharply deviates between the protagonists in the story, Isabel’s mother, Maggie, who is battling what turns out to be a benign tumour after enduring the ravages of chemo, Isabel filled with phobias and insecurities and a phantom pregnancy, Lewis an angry disturbed misogynist, controller.
The story is a fast read by a master storyteller with a mesmerising narrative by voice which moves rapidly to developments. The novel explores the knowability of other people, the mysteries of the human body and the strange ways stories shape, complicate and safeguard our lives. Following her award-winning duo authorship, The Sitter and Night Blue, this is cerebral story that’s compelling following Voice as it tells how we truly know, or don’t know, people in their complexities and how books can not only change destinies, but also have agency
Its told from the perspective of two women protagonists and a book protagonist and even though you may feel a mite sceptical, by page two of the “book perspective”, the hook is firmly embedded. I loved the disembodied introduction of the ashes as a narrator. A masterful invention by O’Keeffe, a brilliant concept. Ashes and book have a compelling ‘voice’ that fuels the journey propelling the page-turning interest. It is a quick read but the narrative lingers, ricocheting around your senses leaving a gentle hint of wanting more. Its a tale that combines psychological tension with imaginative storytelling.
