Lately, I've been reading the UK author, Gwendoline Riley, who has been receiving a lot of attention with the publication of her new novel, The Palm House. I began with the two novels that preceded it, First Love and My Phantoms, and though they offer much to enjoy because Riley brings such a precise focus to her characters they seem sentient, I am most excited about The Palm House.
Like her preceding novels, it is written in the first person, but here the narrator is a more grounded character. She can empathize with others and this keeps the more troubling characters, most frequently the narrator's lovers or divorced parents, at a safe distance because she is no longer at their mercy. In a sense, reading these novels in order of their publication is like watching a character mature. I say that because in all three, the narrator, a woman with narcissistic parents and a talent for being attracted to difficult and self-involved men, feels like the same person.The Palm House is about the narrator's friend, Putnam, an older single man with an acerbic sense of humor. She knows him from her work at a weekly magazine called Sequence. Sequence has a new editor, a bearish man known by his nickname, Shove, who plans to turn Sequence into a London version of The New Yorker. Putnam can't go along with it, arguing that Sequence has a large and loyal readership that is devoted to their very different approach, one which has served them well for fifty years. "And forgive me, but people who want to read The New Yorker can read The New Yorker, can't they? It exists. Unless you want us to start doing a London 'What's on' guide. Is that what you mean? Or cartoons? Forgive me; I feel I can't have understood you. Do you want restaurant reviews in Sequence? New sushi spots" (22-23)?
Shove seems unmoved by this skepticism, so another long-time employee speaks up: Had he "seen a certain piece in the latest issue. By Caitlin Ross. Did he know her work? Vik thought this piece really showed Sequence at its best: serious, learned, sharp.
"'That's great!' said Shove. 'As long as it's not boring. That's our motto now.'
"'Sure,' said Putnam. 'But that rather depends on what you find boring, doesn't it'" (22-23)?
Putnam has so little tolerance for Shove he quits Sequence and doesn't try to find new employment. The novel begins with his decision to leave and ends with his return and Shove's dismissal, a beautifully executed circularity that reflects what is so different about Riley's character, Putnam. He's a round character, and as E.M. Forster describes it in his seminal work, Aspects of the Novel, (1927), most novels have a mix of round and flat characters. Flat characters are predictable, but a round character can surprise the reader because he is capable of changing his behavior. Putnam's roundness is what gives him greater depth and complexity.
As a reader, I am most moved by fiction that shows a character struggling to change his life, as Putnam does in a scene with his friend Laura, the novel's narrator, when he confides an embarrassing truth. It's a memorable scene and it makes this novel feel different from its predecessors because Putnam is a character who is trying to get at the source of the low-level despair he's kept secret for a long time. Revealing something he's never wanted to face, he's naturally hesitant, but his groping, tentative words are immediately recognizable. This is a man who is allowing his vulnerability to show. He has stopped making excuses, and he is reaching down within himself to pull up something that is true. Truth is what is necessary in a novel, and watching him sieve through his own diverting chatter, I feel hope, not only for Putnam, but for people I know who are like him, and, in the end, for myself. It gives me hope for our ability, at last, to see through the lies around us, not only others', but our own.
Riley, Gwendolyn. The Palm House. New York: NYRB, 2026.
Filed under: Introducing a round character