Phantom Days - by Angela O'Keeffe (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A mesmerising novel -- told, in part, by a book.

Before Isabel has even cracked the spine of a novel she bought on a whim ahead of an overseas trip, she senses something beginning within her. From Sydney to London and back again, the book is a quiet observer. When it's left in an airport taxi and Isabel's new boyfriend takes it home, the book begins to learn about him -- about his family and his past. Soon, it begins to understand: Isabel is not safe.

Angela O'Keeffe is the master of voice, and Phantom Days is a marvel: eerie, elegant and unforgettable. With O'Keeffe's signature emotional depth and narrative quirkiness, this novel explores the unknowability of other people, the mysteries of the body, and the strange ways stories shape, complicate and safeguard our lives.

Review Quotes

Phantom Days has faith in our strangest and most inexplicable instincts and permits us to see them as undeniable truths. An artful and bewitching story that seeps skilfully into the body and gently breaks the heart.-- "Lucy Nelson, author of Wait Here"

A unique reading experience, this hypnotic book unfolds like origami in reverse, revealing the layers that create each single moment - layers of individual experience, of ancestral inheritance, and of the physical world itself.-- "Rachel Morton, author of The Sun Was Electric Light"

To read Phantom Days by Angela O'Keeffe is to be enchanted. The story is timeless, ethereal, transcendent. Most of all, however, this slim but weighty novel is an homage to the sacred bond that exists between a book and its reader. I could feel the story lingering within me long after I had finished reading it, like a gentle heat, or a light.-- "Melanie Cheng, author of The Burrow"

About the Author

Angela O'Keeffe grew up with nine siblings on a farm in the Lockyer Valley, Queensland. She completed a Master of Arts in Writing at University of Technology Sydney, and her first novel, Night Blue, was shortlisted for the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing and the Prime Minister's Literary Awards. Her second novel, The Sitter, won the 2024 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award.