The Palm House

Reviews / Votes

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, <i>The Times</i> 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 <i>The Essex Serpent</i> and <i>Death of an Ordinary Man</i> 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 expres-sion "at the height of a nov-el-ist's powers" is ban-died around too often, but it was the phrase that came to mind read-ing The Palm House. Here is a writer who has now worked for two dec-ades on hon-ing her work, and with uncom-prom-ising ambi-tion. As a res-ult, Riley has only got bet-ter and bet-ter - 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 <i>Pond</i> and <i>Big Kiss, Bye-Bye </i> The Palm House on almost any page will give you more delight than most other novels published this year -- John Self, <i>The Critic</i> 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 <i>Pure Colour</i> Fans of Gwendoline Riley's blunt observation and razor-sharp prose will be thrilled with her new book, The Palm House -- Barry Pierce, <i>Vogue</i> Gwendoline Riley can draw character like nobody else . . . Her prose is so sharp you could cut yourself on it -- Elizabeth Macneal author of <i>The Burial Plot</i> 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 <i>Brick Lane</i> 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 <i>Mothers</i> 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 -- <i>BBC Culture</i>, The 40 most exciting books to look forward to in 2026 Expect crystalline prose, an unflinching eye, and thoughtful digressions on life and art -- <i>Five Books</i>, Cal Flyn's Must-Read Novels of Early 2026 I'll follow Gwendoline Riley anywhere -- <i>Literary Hub</i>, <i>Lit Hub</i>'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 -- <i>Shortlist</i>, 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 * She is a writer as thoroughly unsentimental as J.M. Coetzee or Michel Houellebecq. Unlike the latter she doesn't embed her human dramas in superstructures of melodramatic social upheaval, and unlike the former she doesn't make efforts to sound the overtones of history. But like both of them she eschews euphemism and writes in a stark, exacting prose that achieves a clarity of vision when it comes to human behavior. Among American writers, Riley resembles Lydia Davis for the fine calibration and fragility of her sentences * New York Times * One has the sense, reading Riley, of being involved in an alarming experiment, that of reading the world without the slightest mercy or compromise. . . . We truly see her characters, in their descriptive nakedness, alive and horridly vivid * The New Yorker * I've loved Gwendoline Riley's novels for years and her latest The Palm House, did not disappoint . . . This book is more generous than her previous ones, tenderly capturing the solidarity and friendship her characters offer each other. * FT *