The Palm House

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What to expect

From the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of First Love

‘I love this book’ – Sarah Perry, award-winning author of The Essex Serpent
‘Outstandingly brilliant’ – Claire-Louise Bennett, award-winning author of Pond
'I hope to see it on the Booker shortlist' -The Times
'Startling . . . A quiet miracle' - The Guardian

Laura Miller and Edmund Putnam have been friends for a long time. Theirs is a happy meeting of minds, with long evenings spent huddled in an ancient pub by the Thames, where they share office gossip, reflect on their teenage passions, and lament the state of the world.

Recently, though, Putnam has been harder to reach: he has lost his father, and the magazine to which he has dedicated his life has been hijacked by an insufferable new editor, Simon ‘call me Shove’ Halfpenny.

Laura has her own problems: with a prickly mother and a tricky past, and in a beautiful and indifferent city, her day-to-day life is precarious. But as Putnam starts to sink into despondency, she must try to bring him back.

A novel of enduring friendships and small mercies, The Palm House offers us Gwendoline Riley’s trademark keen observation and wit, and leaves us - somehow - with a curious sense of possibility.
Named ‘A Most Anticipated Book for 2026’ by: The Financial Times, The Times, Observer, Guardian, Telegraph, The Sunday Times, New Statesman, Good Housekeeping, Country & Town House, Shortlist, New York Times, Irish Times, Vulture, LitHub and BBC Culture

Critics Review

The Palm House might be my favourite novel of 2026 so far . . . It’s very funny and so full of pathos and horror . . . I wanted to go back to the beginning and start again
Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times
This pristine book confirms Riley's position among the finest novelists working today. Her sentences are crystalline and perfect, and her attention to the world is always acute and occasionally tender - I love this book, and am awed by Riley's accomplishment
Sarah Perry, award-winning author of The Essex Serpent and Death of an Ordinary Man
Riley writes with a poet’s control, her prose so purely distilled that it appears artless . . . What is new is the gentle delicacy she brings to the deep and unshowy solace of friendship, moments of tenderness so exquisitely and exactly rendered that they are almost too intense to bear
The Guardian
This goes straight onto my list of favourite modern novels
The Sunday Times
Outstandingly brilliant
Claire-Louise Bennett, award-winning author of Pond and Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
The Palm House on almost any page will give you more delight than most other novels published this year
John Self, The Critic
Sharp, funny and painfully precise, this is a quietly devastating portrait of modern life
i news
Gwendoline Riley is one of my favourite contemporary writers and The Palm House is the book of hers I love the most
Sheila Heti, award-winning author of Pure Colour
Fans of Gwendoline Riley's blunt observation and razor-sharp prose will be thrilled with her new book, The Palm House
Barry Pierce, Vogue
Gwendoline Riley can draw character like nobody else . . . Her prose is so sharp you could cut yourself on it
Elizabeth Macneal author of The Burial Plot
Achingly sad and subversively funny . . . I read My Phantoms with great pleasure. It's a wonderful combination of achingly sad and subversively funny, simultaneously sharp and tender, and always finely observed. The dialogue is pitch perfect. The relationships are agonising. It's a subtle book, with big themes lightly drawn and precisely rendered, about how to live and how to love
Monica Ali, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Brick Lane
Gwendoline Riley's talent for making characters live, and her skill for identifying the essential moment, word or gesture, is immense
Chris Power, author of Mothers
The Palm House confirms Riley as one of Britain’s best
The Telegraph
Her superpower as a novelist is her hyper-sensitivity to people’s capacity to reveal their worst selves in the things they say
The Observer
A sly dark comedy about a long friendship between two prickly people enduring in the face of the world’s disappointments
The Independent
Mesmerising
The Telegraph
Spikily precise writer Riley reached a new level of acclaim with My Phantoms, shortlisted for The Rathbones Folio Prize. Forever alive to dialogue and character dynamics, The Palm House’s London-set tale of an enduring friendship is highly anticipated
Financial Times
Gwendoline Riley's most recent novel, My Phantoms, saw her compared to Chekhov. For her follow-up, The Palm House, she turns her attention to friendship, focusing on two middle-aged friends whose relationship is tested by the trials of their everyday lives
BBC Culture, The 40 most exciting books to look forward to in 2026
Expect crystalline prose, an unflinching eye, and thoughtful digressions on life and art
Five Books, Cal Flyn’s Must-Read Novels of Early 2026
I’ll follow Gwendoline Riley anywhere
Literary Hub, Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026
A regular fixture on fiction prize shortlists . . . Her next book is intriguing, eavesdropping on two old friends Laura and Edmund who meet up in old London pubs and are dealing with grief, precarity and a nightmare media boss
Shortlist, Our 25 most anticipated fiction books for 2026

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