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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

'Outstandingly brilliant' Claire-Louise Bennett

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.

PRAISE FOR GWENDOLINE RILEY

‘Riley’s prose is so electric, so alive with humour and insight and passion, that by the end you will want to stand up and cheer’ - Paul Murray, author of The Bee Sting

‘Gwendoline Riley is a genius’ - Evening Standard

‘So painful, so funny and acutely observed’ - David Nicholls, author of You Are Here

‘A writer of singular vision’ - The Guardian

Critics Review

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, author of Death of an Ordinary Man
Outstandingly brilliant
Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
Gwendoline Riley is one of my favourite contemporary writers and The Palm House is the book of hers I love the most
Sheila Heti, author of Pure Colour
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 author of Brick Lane
What a phenomenal ear she has, and how remorselessly funny she is
Kevin Barry author of Night Boat to Tangier
A novelist of uncompromising brilliance
Observer
A writer of singular vision
Guardian
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
One of the most exciting novels in years… Riley is as good at turning over our expectations as she is at turning sentences around… the final stretch of the book is so good its almost showing off, with comedy and tragedy side by side
John self
Take up the gauntlet with Gwendoline Riley: it's worth it
TLS
Riley's novels get under your skin
Observer
Gwendoline Riley is a genius
Evening Standard
The Palm House confirms Riley as one of Britain’s best
The Telegraph
A sly dark comedy about a long friendship between two prickly people enduring in the face of the world’s disappointments
The Independent
One of our finest novelists of constrained fury: nobody writes better . . . Riley’s prose is sharp, her dialogue pitch-perfect, her exasperation channelled into devastating comedy
Observer
Mesmerising
The Telegraph
Painfully good
The Times, 'Books of 2026'

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