Source: Review copy from the publisher, Picador – Thank you!
One of the highlights of my reading year in 2023 was my discovery of Gwendoline Riley via her novel My Phantoms. It chronicles a toxic mother-daughter relationship as seen through the eyes of the youngest daughter, Bridget. It’s a toxic relationship for sure, but there is love there too – but it’s the way that Bridget tells it, with a strong streak of very dark humour that had me up, down, chuckling or shocked and on the verge of tears throughout. So when I heard Riley’s latest was coming, I couldn’t wait to read it.
The Palm House is a very different book. It begins with an evocative sentence,
These were the murky effects: a dark yellow sky – like iodine – and brownish clouds, mounted in flat, extravagant, painterly puffs.
Laura Miller and Edward Putnam are on Southwark Bridge, looking at the sky full of sand and ash blown north from the Sahara and Spanish bush fires. They’re on their way to the pub for one of their regular get togethers reminiscing about old friends and the way things used to be. But Putnam is stressed, his eczema is back. This is due to a new boss at the magazine, Sequence, where he works as a features editor.
The new editor went by Shove. His given name was Simon – Simon Halfpenny – but as he told each member of staff at Sequence – and some of them he had to tell more than once – no one called him Simon. It was Shove. Yes, Shove.
He was thirty-ish. He had been managing editor of a sports title. The board had moved him across.
This is a thinly veiled satirical nod to ‘Stig’ Abell’s time as Editor of the TLS (The Times Literary Supplement), an august literary periodical with a history of over a century now. Shove is a populariser – he wants to turn Sequence into a ‘London version of the New Yorker‘. Putnam rebels by leaving – his father had died that year, and he’d come into some money.
We will return to Putnam later, but Laura takes us on another strand next, looking back at her childhood. She recounts a couple of stories about holidays abroad with her mother and grandmother, who they lived with, both tricky customers. She swiftly moves on to her mid-teens and an obsession with a successful stand-up comedian, who had a schtick about being in pain, with a catchphrase ‘so lonely’ and a ‘signature move’ of hands over face mortification, moonwalking backwards off set. She makes tapes and sends them to him and books a ticket to see him on tour in Liverpool, waiting afterwards at the stage door. She makes friends with another fan, Anna, who the comedian recognises, and after another gig, they are invited to go backstage where they take turns to sit on his knee. You can see what’s going to happen as he gradually grooms them from gig to gig, tempting Laura down to his pad in London where he gives her thrush!
A short interlude while in London follows, and later a sort of relationship with an actor. But we soon return to the present to catch up with Putnam, who’d been conspicuous by his absence. He’s not been doing so well, and had taken to writing letters to the newspapers and magazines.
‘So he’s alive,’ I said.
Laura, who has been feeling guilty for neglecting him, visits. I won’t tell you how the story ends except to say that Shove doesn’t last at the magazine. By the way, the title of the novel refers to Kew Gardens, where Laura and Putnam had planned to visit the Palm House.
This was a strange novel. Episodic in nature, the two threads of Laura now and Laura then sit rather uneasily with each other. We are shocked by young Laura’s experiences at the hands of the comedian – it’s no laughing matter. However, she obviously didn’t let this experience define her, (a little like Lynn Barber methinks – see my review of her memoir An Education). The older Laura a few decades on is a little world-weary at times, but has some cracking repartee. Riley’s talent at dialogue comes to the fore here. It was interesting to get a little glimpse of how the office politics at a literary magazine might work – or not!
While there is plenty of wit and excellent writing on offer here, perhaps this novel disappointed slightly due to the lack of the bigger fireworks that we got with My Phantoms. That said, it was an enjoyable read, and I would love to discover more of her back catalogue.
Source: Review copy – thank you! Picador hardback, 210 pages. BUY at Waterstones or Amazon UK via my affiliate links.
Quite the opening!