The Palm House - Gwendoline Riley

Something that's struck me about a few of the books on this year's Booker Prize longlist is how they feel plucked out of a different era of fiction entirely. Missouri Williams is clearly going for an 18th century Gothic vibe with The Vivisectors, and M. John Harrison's The End Of Everything reminded me, when I reviewed it, of early 90s New Weird. The Palm House gave me a similar sensation, except here it felt like a classic Booker Prize literary novel, the sort of thing that could have slotted comfortably onto shelves in the 80s or 90s alongside Graham Swift or Julian Barnes. That's not a criticism at all, I love those books, and this felt very familiar in the best possible way. It felt like the sort of lit fic I grew up reading. I haven't read any Riley before, so I've no idea whether that familiarity is typical of her work or something she was doing deliberately here. What I took from the book is that it's largely about finding comfort in friends, in familiarity, in shared history.…