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.
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
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
A sly dark comedy about a long friendship between two prickly people enduring in the face of the world’s disappointments - The Independent
