Gwendoline Riley

Bridget Grant’s mother and father are unsettling. Her mother, Helen who is known as Hen, desperately wants to fit in. It is something she gestures towards throughout her life, never fully achieving it nor, perhaps, having a clear sense of what achieving it would be like. Bridget’s father is an altogether nastier piece of work, playing to the gallery even if only an imaginary gallery; pointlessly cruel to both Hen, Bridget, and Bridget’s sister, Michelle. Bridget’s only defence show more against him is to close herself off from him in hopes that he will just go away. It is somewhat surprising then to find that Bridget and her sister survive this upbringing. Mostly.

So much is odd about Bridget’s characterization of her parents and their sometimes friends that the reader may begin to suspect Bridget’s point of view. Is she as stable and clear-eyed as she appears? Understandably her relations with her mother, later in life, remain strained, but she is also distant with her sister, who has only a minor role in this novel. As the title suggests, Bridget is haunted by her mother, never fully exorcising her influence (or the memory of her repulsive father). So it comes as a bit of a shock when we see later see Bridget in a simple relationship with her partner, John. Is it convincing?

Absolutely amazing writing, I think. It must be so difficult to get the tone just right. Gwendoline Riley does.

Easily recommended to those up for a bit of nasty families. show less

Neve is a writer who lives with an older man named Edwyn. Their life together is not exactly loving—more of a co-existence of mutual tolerance. Neve is pragmatic. For much of her life she's been doing what she must in order to survive, and one of the things she must do is put up with Edwyn’s neurotic episodes. They do “cuddle,” and from time to time enjoy one another’s company. But as if a switch has been flicked, Edwyn turns on her with paranoid, often nonsensical accusations (for show more instance, he claims she is out to “annihilate” him), and shrill, belittling insults. His problem seems to be with women in general: he sits in front of the television and spews similarly irrational complaints at female screen characters. Neve’s voice as she tries to talk him down from his mounting rage is calm and measured, but also ineffective. Their life together consists of cheerful periods of intimacy followed by days of icy, combative silence, times during which Neve questions her own sanity for staying with him. The narrative also delves into Neve’s past, her family life with a bullying father and an emotionally disengaged mother. Gwendoline Riley deliberately holds her reader at a distance: the novel is tersely written in clipped prose that generates almost unbearable tension. We observe Neve going through her days, but we never get close to her, never get the opportunity to really understand what makes her tick. But the novel fascinates for precisely this reason. Though it’s her story and she’s narrating, Neve remains elusive: indistinct and unknowable. Reading the book is like following someone through zigzagging streets, someone who keeps to the shadows, who, just as we catch a glimpse of her, slips out of sight, and who remains—constantly, tantalizingly—out of reach.

In First Love, Gwendolin Riley’s brilliant, disturbing fifth novel, she presents a marriage as a minefield or toxic warzone, seething with hazard, a place where there are no winners, only losers. show less

I wavered between a 4 and a 5-star review for this, but in the end, the impact on me was so thunderous a 5 seemed the only option. This brief book is an episodic overview of the relationship between our narrator, Bridget, and her mother. To a lesser extent, Bridget's relationship to her father is explored, but mostly we see it as a substantial factor in building Bridget's antipathy for and separation from her mother. She was angry with her mother for things she did, but angrier by far that show more her mother did not protect her from her father's narcissism and related cruelty. For her own part, Bridget's mother is obsessed with her own unhappiness. She has a clear idea of what her life should be like and tries to play at living that life rather than connecting with the life she has or finding out what actually gives her pleasure. I watched my mother perform life rather than living it, and I can say for certain it is a foolproof recipe for anxiety and depression and for making your children feel defective and unliked. Bridget, once she is an adult, plays at trying to please her mother, taking her to nice restaurants she perceives as being what she wants when in fact those visits are ways to show her mother her own success (which is as false and performative for Bridget as her mother's actions are.) Bridget is then bitter and angry when her mother does not enjoy the outings and responds in the expected passive-aggressive manner. All of this is conveyed through small moments. Nothing happens in the book, and yet everything happens in the book. In the end, Bridget is as unloving a caretaker as her mother was, wearing the heavy weight of her duty, her martyrdom, for all to see.

As I said, this was very personal for me. I thought about a lot of things I have chosen not to think about much since my parents' long-ago deaths. I expect to keep thinking about those things for some time to come. I am not sure I am pleased about this, I was happy not dealing with all of that, but my own spoiled compartmentalization efforts do not change the fact that this book accomplished its goals with literary elegance and precision. If this sort of exploration appeals to you, I can say I cannot imagine it being done better. I don't know if I enjoyed the read, but its impact was profound. show less

It is hard to rate as the writing is well done, but the overall subject of a verbally (mercifully it stops short of physical) abusive marriage is so unpleasant to read about that I can't really rise to a 3-star "Like" or 4-star "Really Like" rating. The husband seems to be suffering from bipolar disorder along with his physical complaints, but that diagnosis or any attempt at solution is never mentioned.

The quirky interludes with the wife seeing her mother (who had escaped a physically show more abusive father) make for some amount of relief but even those have an underlying thread of menace to them. The mother has this facial tic of "baring her teeth" several times which is always stated without any further specifics. You are left unsettled and constantly wondering whether it is a smile, a grimace and/or ferocity is meant. Maybe that was the author's intention. show less