The Palm House

“Outstandingly brilliant.” —Claire-Louise Bennett

“Gwendoline Riley is one of my favourite contemporary writers and The Palm House is the book of hers I love the most.” —Sheila Heti

“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.” —James Wood, The New Yorker

“Riley has occasionally been misread through a lens of trendy melancholia. But her work, especially since the breakthrough of First Love, more closely resembles the sturdy yet delicate realism of the 19th century—Chekhov, Stendhal—in which mundane objects, landscapes and exchanges are imbued with rich layers of social and psychological meaning. . . . Like Mary Gaitskill she is a moralist.” —Lidija Haas, The New York Times Book Review

“Riley has a spy’s attention to detail and a great and terrible power to re-create tics, pretensions, and the painfully recognizable human tendency to wallow in delusion.” —Rachel Connolly, New York magazine

“If you need any further proof that Gwendoline Riley is one of our finest prose stylists, look no further than her eighth book, The Palm House. She writes slender, scorching stories that capture the humour and pathos of ordinary English lives in unflinching detail and painfully funny dialogue.”
—Madeleine Feeny

“Riley’s particular ear for linguistic nuance and eye for pinpoint detail are as distinctive as ever in her seventh novel . . . On one level, this is an account of an ordinary existence short on plot developments; on another, it’s a subtly calibrated observation of how a person’s world turns. Riley elevates the everyday to exceptional heights.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The Palm House might be my favourite novel of 2026 so far . . . It’s very funny and so full of pathos and horror. As ever, Riley’s cringe comedy is pitch perfect. The writing surprises but it’s always rooted in what feels true.” —Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Sunday Times (UK)