BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST 2026 | Emma recommends... The Palm House - Gwendoline Riley

Emma says... Surely this has "Booker Winner" written all over it? A novel in which very little happens and yet the whole of the human condition is laid bare, through prose that enjoys the precision of poetry, and pitch perfect dialogue. There is such clear-sightedness here of the ways in which we know - and yet never really can know - each other, the experiences that shape us and yet stay largely private, of lazy, everyday cruelty, and the quiet comfort of steadfast friendship (the motif of crisp packets opened out to share on a pub table beautifully bookends). Intense and wry, sad and beautiful, controlled and expansive - incredible.

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Laura and Putnam have been friends for a long time. Theirs is a happy meeting of minds, with long evenings spent huddled in an ancient pub by the Thames, where they share office gossip, reflect on their teenage passions, and lament the state of the world.

Recently, though, Putnam has been harder to reach: he has lost his father, and the magazine to which he has dedicated his life has been hijacked by an insufferable new editor, Simon ‘call me Shove’ Halfpenny. Laura has her own problems: with a prickly mother and a tricky past, and in a beautiful and indifferent city, her day-to-day life is precarious. But as Putnam starts to sink into despondency, she must try to bring him back.

The Palm House offers us Gwendoline Riley’s trademark keen observation and wit, and leaves us - somehow - with a curious sense of possibility. It is a slender masterpiece from one of Britain’s finest prose stylists.