“Stuffed with pathos and humour,” according to The Times, The Palm Home centres on a pair of spiky middle-aged colleagues, Laura Miller, a author and the novel’s narrator, and Edmund Putnam, an older editor who’s leaving his job at a intellectual literary journal. The chums’ conversations in London pubs over drinks and shared packets of crisps are interspersed with typically heartbreaking recollections about their pasts. Critics have praised the novel’s dialogue, which Riley, writes the LRB, “wields… like a Swiss military knife, now corkscrewed, now serrated, however at all times coming to a brief, sharp level.” (RL)
