My Lover’s Lover was published by Headline Review in 2002, O’Farrell’s second novel. Where her debut (After You’d Gone) used fragmented chronology to explore grief, this novel uses elements of the ghost story to explore jealousy, obsession, and the way previous relationships haunt present ones — sometimes literally.
Lily moves to London and into the flat of her new boyfriend Marcus. But the flat carries traces of his previous girlfriend — not merely forgotten possessions but a presence that Lily senses and Marcus will not discuss. His ex-girlfriend died, and the circumstances remain unclear: Marcus will not talk about her, his friends offer contradictory accounts, and Lily becomes increasingly obsessed with a dead woman she never met.
The novel operates on the border between psychological thriller and ghost story: is the presence Lily senses real (a genuine haunting) or is it a projection of her own jealousy and insecurity? O’Farrell refuses to fully commit to either interpretation, maintaining an ambiguity that reflects the emotional reality of the situation — the dead lover is both literally absent and psychologically omnipresent, both gone and impossible to escape.
The novel explores how the dead colonize the living: Marcus cannot grieve openly because the death was traumatic; Lily cannot ignore it because the trauma is visibly present in Marcus’s behavior; and the dead woman — silent, absent, unable to speak for herself — becomes a screen onto which both project their fears.
Collecting My Lover’s Lover
First edition (Headline Review, London, 2002): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $10–$25
- Signed first edition: $20–$50