One of the recurring puzzles of Gwendoline Riley’s novels is why her protagonists, acerbic but measured women, find themselves, again and again, in relationships with men devoid of charm and capable of wicked cruelty. Or to put it another way, why do the oafish, careless and stupid have so much power over the lives of otherwise sensitive and thoughtful people? Like several of its predecessors, The Palm House is narrated by a woman who, through a series of recollections of her upbringing and musings on her current life, seems to be trying to understand the oppressive force that mediocrity can exert.
The novel is partly concerned with the decision of Edmund Putnam, a friend of the narrator, Laura, to leave his job at a magazine after twenty-five years. Sequence, in common with its model, the Times Literary Supplement, has offices near London Bridge. Its board has also ill-advisedly hired a ‘company man’ to take over the editorship. Like Stephen ‘Stig’ Abell, who moved to the TLS from the bosom-forward Sun in 2016, Riley’s fictional Simon Halfpenny also goes by a monosyllabic nickname. ‘Shove’, as he insists on being called, has plans to turn Sequence into the New Yorker, despite the fact that, as Putnam bemoans, there is already a New Yorker, not to mention countless other publications committed to serving up ‘approachable’ writing to the masses. The novel’s title alludes to the tall Victorian glasshouse in Kew Gardens where Laura promises to go with Putnam and his father. Riley’s suggestion is that the refined, insular world of literary magazines in which beautiful things can grow because they are cut off from the outside is its own kind of conservatory.
Ostensibly, it is in response to Sequence’s middlebrow turn that Putnam – or Ed, as Shove calls him – decides to leave. But Putnam pleads his case too emphatically for it to be convincing: Shove allows him to get on with his job; Putnam need only tolerate the occasional
Source: literaryreview.co.uk