Gwendoline Riley has long enjoyed critical acclaim for her particular style of novel: unflinching, keenly observed portrayals of contemporary British life, narrated by complicated women who inhabit difficult relationships with their usually somewhat less sophisticated mothers. Nobody does it better. Riley’s novels are slight, but strong. Completely devoid of sentimentality but rich in human truth. Her seventh offering, The Palm House, follows form.
The protagonist, Laura Miller, is a quintessentially Riley creation. An intelligent, astute narrator, Laura enjoys a “nice, under the radar job” as an assistant editor of a history magazine. She notices everything: the return of her friend’s eczema, the changing expressions that hint at the inner lives of her friends, her own precarious position in life. And yes, she has an awkward relationship with her mother, a woman she describes as a “mixture of hyperbole and deprecation”, which her friend interprets as simply the “annihilating flippancy” of northern England. So far, so Riley. What is a departure for this novel, however, is the centring of a friendship as the primary relationship.
When we meet Laura and Edmund Putman, Putman has lost his job at a magazine to which he dedicated his life for 25 years. Laura feels that talking to him as he wallows in despair is like “trying to climb a steep sand dune, while he stood on the crest: exultant in his misery”. There is an exquisite torture to eavesdropping on their conversations. Laura’s endurance is a testimony to friendship that is wove throughout her other excursions into the past. That there is no hint of romance between them, however, is refreshing. Riley confidently tests the theory of platonic friendship and yields convincing results. In the end, it is this commitment to the importance of chosen family that offers a surprising thrill of optimism, despite Riley’s determined pragmatism.
This novel can be read in one sitting; it is so engaging that it proves impossible not to. Readers don’t turn to Riley for elaborate plots. Instead, what she offers has much higher stakes: how do we navigate and survive ordinary lives? Finding beauty in the banality of everyday human suffering is what typically elevates her work to something extraordinary. In this incarnation, however, her pristine prose soars.
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Helen Cullen is the author of The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually and the forthcoming Iseult.
