In conversation with Amy Sambrooke, Angela O’Keeffe discusses a book that asks an unusual and beguiling question: what if a book could think, feel and observe the world around it?

Partly narrated by a sentient novel, Phantom Days follows a book as it moves between readers, witnessing intimate lives and uncovering secrets that its human characters cannot see. Along the way, the novel explores motherhood, memory, longing, truth and the strange relationship between writers, readers and the stories that connect them.

O’Keeffe reflects on the novel’s origins, the challenge of writing from a book’s perspective, and the experience of returning to the manuscript after a cancer diagnosis and treatment. The conversation also touches on Virginia Woolf, Dostoevsky, Mark Rothko, faith, creativity and the mystery of where stories come from.

Phantom Days is a novel about what survives after we let things go, and the lives books continue to live long after they leave their authors behind.

This episode of Fully Lit was recorded at Gleebooks on Gadigal land in Sydney.

Voices

Angela O’Keeffe is the author of Night Blue, The Sitter and Phantom Days, novels that blend art, imagination and storytelling in strikingly original ways.

Amy Sambrooke is CEO of Varuna, the National Writers’ House, and a passionate advocate for Australian writers and literature

Credits

Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros.

Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang.

Further Reading

Phantom Days by Angela O’Keeffe

The Sitter by Angela O’Keeffe

Night Blue by Angela O’Keeffe

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Selected writings of Virginia Woolf

Works by Mark Rothko referenced throughout the discussion.