In her third novel, Riley charts the peculiar final reckoning of a highly charged romance, exploring the possibility of human connection as two young people try to reconcile themselves to all of life€™s bad endings, and give some meaning to their mayfly existences.

JOSHUA SPASSKY

Literature & Fiction

Riley, Gwendoline

Contemporary

Vintage Books

Opposed Positions

A spare and stunning new novel from one of England's brightest literary talents.      At thirty, Aislinn Kelly is an occasional novelist with a near-morbid attunement to the motives of those around her. Isolated, restless and stuck, she decamps to America -- a default recourse -- this time to an attic room in Indianapolis, to attempt once again the definitive act of self-salvage. There are sharp memories to contend with as the summer heats up, and not least regarding her family history, now revealed as so botched and pitiful it seems it might yet cancel her out. She's spent years evading the attentions of her unstable, bullying father, only to find her mother now cowering in a second rancid marriage. There are also friendships lost or ailing: with bibulous playwright Karl, sly poet Erwin, depressed bookshop-wallah Bronagh, and Aislinn's best friend Cathy, who has recently found God... Finally her thoughts turn to her last encounter with Jim Schmidt, a man she's loved for ten years, hasn't seen for five, yet still has to consider her opposite number in life.Opposed Positions is a startlingly frank novel about the human predicament, about love and its substitutes, disgraceful or otherwise. Some of these people want to be free -- of themselves, of each other -- and some have darker imperatives. Wry, shocking, perfectly observed and utterly heart-breaking, the novel moves towards its troubling conclusion: a painful appreciation of what it is we've come from, and what we might be heading for.

A spare and stunning new novel from one of England's brightest literary talents. At thirty, Aislinn Kelly is an occasional novelist with a near-morbid attunement to the motives of those around her. Isolated, restless and stuck, she decamps to America -- a default recourse -- this time to an attic room in Indianapolis, to attempt once again the definitive act of self-salvage. There are sharp memories to contend with as the summer heats up, and not least regarding her family history, now revealed as so botched and pitiful it seems it might yet cancel her out. She's been bullied and belittled by her long-vanished father through a stream of emails, and now her mother is helplessly glorying in a second rancid marriage. There are also friendships lost or ailing: with bibulous playwright Karl, sly poet Erwin, depressed bookshop-wallah Bronagh, and Aislinn's best friend Kathy, who has recently found God... Finally her thoughts turn to her last encounter with Jim Schmidt, a man she's loved for ten years, hasn't seen for five, yet still has to consider her opposite number in life. Opposed Positions is a startlingly honest novel about the human predicament, about love and its substitutes, disgraceful or otherwise. Some of these people want to be free -- of themselves, of each other -- and some have darker imperatives. Wry, shocking, perfectly observed and utterly heart-breaking, the novel moves towards its troubling conclusion: a painful appreciation of what it is we've come from, and what we might be heading for.

JONATHAN CAPE.

Carmel McKisco is wry, volatile and full of longing: a 20-year-old working nights in a dive bar in Manchester, England. Cut off from her family, she forges odd alliances with her customers, daydreams about escaping to Cornwall, her own Elysian Fields, and nurtures mordant fixations on Tony, her charismatic ex, and Steven, her washed-up adolescent hero. As she spins out the days and nights of an unrelenting rainy winter, she finds herself compelled to confront her romantic preoccupations. Peopled with memorable characters and imbued with a subtle sense of raw loneliness beneath the banter and whimsy, this remarkable debut is as cool and assured as Carmel herself. Cold Water was chosen by the Guardian as one of the five outstanding British debut novels of 2002. “I wouldn’t just recommend this book to friends, I’d buy it for them.”—The Guardian “[Cold Water] makes you think of Denis Johnson or Anne Tyler ... effortless stylistic sleight of hand and vivid, tactile humanity.”—Alan Warner, author of The Sopranos “Gwendoline Riley is only twenty-two, but her short, sharp prose sets her book apart from other coming-of-age novels.”

Cold Water

Literary

Carroll&Graf

Plucked from the rainy streets of Manchester, award-winning author Gwendoline Riley’s novella and stories explore the diminishing prospects of true love, the daunting face of God, and the aftereffects of too much time at the bar with a devotion she likens to “lying on a rest room floor saying the Jesus prayer.” In the titular novella, the centerpiece of the collection, we meet Esther, an emotionally capricious twenty-something, part-time struggling writer, and skeptical romantic. Esther loses herself on the streets of Manchester, her adopted home, and explores it with ritual fervor. Although her best friend Donna provides a steady source of emotional succor, Esther adopts a loner’s guise in the face of a broken home and a series of less-than-storybook romances. However, when a young American musician enters her life she comes face-to-face with the intimacy she so desperately seeks. Riley has created a cast of characters that embody both an enigmatic reticence, and a graceful emotionalism. Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Mornings confirms Riley as one of the most talented new voices in fiction today.

Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Mornings: A Novella and Stories

United States

Shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction Catastrophically ill-suited for each other, and forever straddling a line between relative calm and explosive confrontation, Neve and her husband, Edwyn, live together in London. For the moment they have reached a place of peace in their relationship, but past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that brought her to Edwyn, she describes other loves and other debts—from her bullying father and her self-involved mother, to a musician she struggled to forget. Drawing us into the battleground of this marriage, Gwendoline Riley tells a transfixing story of mistakes and misalliances, of helplessness and hostility, in which both husband and wife have played a part. Could this possibly be, nonetheless, a story of love?

First Love

Melville House

A hostile mother-daughter relationship stands at the center of this astonishing, blackly humorous novel by the acclaimed author of First Love.\nHelen Grant is a mystery to her daughter. An extrovert with few friends who has sought intimacy in the wrong places, a twice-divorced mother of two now living alone surrounded by her memories, Helen (known to her acquaintances as “Hen”) has always haunted Bridget.\nNow, Bridget is an academic in her forties. She sees Helen once a year, and considers the problem to be contained. As she looks back on their tumultuous relationship—the performances and small deceptions—she tries to reckon with the cruelties inflicted on both sides. But when Helen makes it clear that she wants more, it seems an old struggle will have to be replayed.\nFrom the prize-winning author of First Love, My Phantoms is a bold, heart-stopping portrayal of a failed familial bond, which brings humor, subtlety, and new life to the difficult terrain of mothers and daughters.

My Phantoms (New York Review Books Classics)

Dramas & Plays

New York Review Books

A raw and engrossing portrait of familial and marital dysfunction by “one of Britain’s most original young writers” (The Observer).\nNeve is a writer in her mid-thirties married to an older man, Edwyn. For now they are in a place of relative peace, but their past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that led her to this marriage, she tells of other loves and other debts, from her bullying father and her self-involved mother to a musician who played her and a series of lonely flights from place to place.\nDrawing the reader into the battleground of her relationship, Neve spins a story of helplessness and hostility, an ongoing conflict in which both husband and wife have played a part. But is this, nonetheless, also a story of love?

First Love (New York Review Books Classics)

Returning to Manchester, her broken home, Esther moves back to the flat she used to share with her best friend Donna. Surrounded by empty gin bottles, with her past life safely taped up in stacked cardboard boxes, she proceeds to turn her back on a 'real world' that seems meaningless and absurd. Instead she lives in her own head. Then she meets Newton, a care-worn American wanderer with a drinker's face and an angel's smile. Newton changes everything. But for how long?

Sick Notes

Vintage

Mis fantasmas

Genre Fiction

Narrativa

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Books by Riley, Gwendoline

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Riley, Gwendoline. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

JOSHUA SPASSKY

Opposed Positions

Opposed Positions

Cold Water

Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Mornings: A Novella and Stories

First Love

My Phantoms (New York Review Books Classics)

First Love (New York Review Books Classics)

Sick Notes

Mis fantasmas