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The Palm House

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What to expect

From the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of First Love, The Palm House is a sharply observed, slyly funny novel of enduring friendships and small mercies.

'This goes straight onto my list of favourite modern novels’ – The Times
'One of our finest novelists of constrained fury: nobody writes better' – The Observer
'Mesmerising . . . confirms Riley as one of Britain’s best' – The Telegraph
‘A slim, impeccably controlled story that contains multitudes’ – The Guardian

Laura and 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.

The Palm House offers us Gwendoline Riley’s trademark keen observation and wit, and leaves us - somehow - with a curious sense of possibility. It is a slender masterpiece from one of Britain’s finest prose stylists.

‘I love this book’ – Sarah Perry, award-winning author of The Essex Serpent

‘Outstandingly brilliant’ – Claire-Louise Bennett, award-winning author of Big Kiss, Bye-Bye

‘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

Named a Most Anticipated Book for 2026 by: Financial Times, The Times, The Observer, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, New Statesman, Good Housekeeping, Country & Town House, Shortlist, The 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
The expres­sion “at the height of a nov­el­ist’s powers” is ban­died around too often, but it was the phrase that came to mind read­ing The Palm House. Here is a writer who has now worked for two dec­ades on hon­ing her work, and with uncom­prom­ising ambi­tion. As a res­ult, Riley has only got bet­ter and bet­ter – and I’m sure I won’t be the only one to say that The Palm House is her best novel yet
Daily Telegraph
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
Mesmerizing . . . Structurally it’s fluid, but this is a narrative whose power derives from precision. The details and dialogue are witty, occasionally sinister, and redolent of possibility along with a pungently English melancholy
Mail on Sunday
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
This novel can be read in one sitting; it is so engaging that it proves impossible not to . . . Extraordinary
Irish Times
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
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
Riley’s novel can be read as parallel narratives of trauma and the ways we avoid confronting it . . . A series of often dazzlingly perceptive portraits
Literary Review
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
A new Gwendoline Riley novel might strike a sort of fantastic fear into the heart — may we never be so precisely perceived! Her observation of the minutiae of (awkward, solipsistic, desperate) human behaviour makes her characters painfully real, all their idiosyncrasy and damage laid bare
Review31
The Palm House once again demonstrates Gwendoline Riley's keen eye for detail
The Scotsman
The prizewinning author deploys language to devastating effect as she revisits her theme of women plagued by brittle relationships
FT
Author Gwendoline Riley
Narrator Nathalie Buscombe
Duration 4 hours and 54 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781035021086
Format Audiobook
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Genre Family life fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Novella (Short Novel)
Availability GB, IE

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