The Palm House

by Gwendoline Riley

The Palm House follows longtime friends Laura Miller and Edmund Putnam as they navigate grief, career upheaval, and family tensions in contemporary London. Their evenings in a Southwark pub, sharing gossip and teenage memories, contrast with Putnam’s despondency after his father's death and the takeover of his literary magazine by a brash new editor, Simon “Shove” Halfpenny. Laura, coping with a prickly mother and a complicated past, strives to pull Putnam back from the brink. Gwendoline Riley delivers her trademark sharp observation, dry wit, and elegiac tone, turning ordinary lives into a study of enduring friendship, small mercies, and the fragile possibility of renewal.