Angela O’Keeffe’s compelling new novel, Phantom Days, is a haunting contemplation of the power (or, perhaps more precisely, the agency) of stories.

Isabel, in her thirties, ends a short romance with Lewis after an act of violence he attempts to obscure. Shortly afterwards, she develops a phantom pregnancy: while her body behaves as though she is pregnant, there is no foetus.

Review: Phantom Days – Angela O'Keeffe (University of Queensland Press)

The ongoing development of this rare condition, along with a looming tension from Lewis’s refusal to let go of Isabel and his imagining of a potential future child, adds propulsion to this otherwise introspective work.

I read it in one sitting, but it hovered in the background of my world for weeks after. Its continued presence reminded me of novelists Sofia Samatar and Kate Zambreno’s phrase “the ambience that is literature”, referring to the way that books – like places – can emanate an atmosphere or vibe.

A painting is more than a picture

It would be difficult to summarise either of O’Keeffe’s previous two novels – Night Blue, largely narrated by Jackson Pollock’s painting Blue Poles, and The Sitter, about a writer struggling to finish a novel about Cezanne’s wife – without talking about visual art. Its presence in Phantom Days is more subtle, nested within layers of other themes: literature and reading, health and recovery, domestic abuse and misogyny, intergenerational trauma and grief, and relations of varying kinds.

It is by no means absent, though.

At several points, the novel references a series of dark maroon works by abstract artist Mark Rothko. These paintings are kept in a room in Tate Modern, designed under detailed instructions from the late artist, including soft lighting and low........

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