Gwendoline Riley – författare

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026From the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of First Love, The Palm House is a sharply observed, slyly funny novel of enduring friendships and small mercies.‘This goes straight onto my list of favourite modern novels’ – The Times‘One of our finest novelists of constrained fury: nobody writes better’ – The Observer‘Mesmerising . . . confirms Riley as one of Britain’s best’ – The Telegraph‘A slim, impeccably controlled story that contains multitudes’ – The GuardianLaura 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. ‘I love this book’ – Sarah Perry, award-winning author of The Essex Serpent‘Outstandingly brilliant’ – Claire-Louise Bennett, award-winning author of Big Kiss, Bye-Bye‘Riley’s prose is so electric, so alive with humour and insight and passion, that by the end you will want to stand up and cheer’ – Paul Murray, author of The Bee StingNamed a Most Anticipated Book for 2026 by: Financial Times, The Times, The Observer, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, New Statesman, Good Housekeeping, Country & Town House, Shortlist, The New York Times, Irish Times, Vulture, LitHub and BBC Culture.

'A singular, devastating journey into the ungovernable reaches of the heart' ObserverSHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017Neve is a writer in her mid-30s married to an older man, Edwyn. For now they are in a place of relative peace, but their past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that led her to this marriage, she tells of other loves and other debts, from her bullying father and her self-involved mother to a musician who played her and a series of lonely flights from place to place.Drawing the reader into the battleground of her relationship, Neve spins a story of helplessness and hostility, an ongoing conflict in which both husband and wife have played a part. But is this, nonetheless, also a story of love?

Carmel McKisco is wry, volatile and full of longing: a twenty-year-old girl working nights in a Manchester dive bar. Cut off from her family, and from Tony, her carefree ex, she forges strange alliances with her customers, and daydreams, half-heartedly, about escaping to Cornwall. Cold Water is a poignant picaresque of barmaids and barflies; eccentric individuals all somehow tethered to their past - not least Carmel herself, who is nurturing mordant fixations on both her lost love, Tony, and her washed-up adolescent hero: a singer from Macclesfield. As she spins out the days and nights of an unrelentingly rainy winter she finds herself compelled to confront her romantic preoccupations, for better or worse.

At thirty, Aislinn Kelly is an occasional novelist with a near-morbid attunement to the motives of those around her. Isolated, restless and stuck, she decamps to America - a default recourse - this time to an attic room in Indianapolis, to attempt once again the definitive act of self-salvage. There are sharp memories to contend with as the summer heats up, and not least regarding her family history, now revealed as so botched and pitiful it seems it might yet cancel her out. She's spent years evading the attentions of her unstable, bullying father, only to find her mother now cowering in a second rancid marriage. There are also friendships lost or ailing: with bibulous playwright Karl, sly poet Erwin, depressed bookshop-wallah Bronagh, and Aislinn's best friend Cathy, who has recently found God... Finally her thoughts turn to her last encounter with Jim Schmidt, a man she's loved for ten years, hasn't seen for five, yet still has to consider her opposite number in life.Opposed Positions is a startlingly frank novel about the human predicament, about love and its substitutes, disgraceful or otherwise. Some of these people want to be free - of themselves, of each other - and some have darker imperatives. Wry, shocking, perfectly observed and utterly heart-breaking, the novel moves towards its troubling conclusion: a painful appreciation of what it is we've come from, and what we might be heading for.

Hard Rain ranges over thirty years of Bob Dylan's recordings, films, and concerts to deliver astute insights into,and sometimes heretical judgements of,his prodigious corpus of work. This updated edition includes a new epilogue that examines Dylan's thirtieth anniversary celebration in 1992 his albums Good As I Been to You, World Gone Wrong, and Time Out of Mind his 1997 performance before the Pope and his 1998 Grammy Award comeback. The result is unparalleled rock criticism.

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026From the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of First Love, The Palm House is a sharply observed, slyly funny novel of enduring friendships and small mercies.‘This goes straight onto my list of favourite modern novels’ – The Times‘One of our finest novelists of constrained fury: nobody writes better’ – The Observer‘Mesmerising . . . confirms Riley as one of Britain’s best’ – The Telegraph‘A slim, impeccably controlled story that contains multitudes’ – The GuardianLaura 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. ‘I love this book’ – Sarah Perry, award-winning author of The Essex Serpent‘Outstandingly brilliant’ – Claire-Louise Bennett, award-winning author of Big Kiss, Bye-Bye‘Riley’s prose is so electric, so alive with humour and insight and passion, that by the end you will want to stand up and cheer’ – Paul Murray, author of The Bee StingNamed a Most Anticipated Book for 2026 by: Financial Times, The Times, The Observer, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, New Statesman, Good Housekeeping, Country & Town House, Shortlist, The New York Times, Irish Times, Vulture, LitHub and BBC Culture.

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2026From the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of First Love, The Palm House is a sharply observed, slyly funny novel of enduring friendships and small mercies.'This goes straight onto my list of favourite modern novels’ – The Times'One of our finest novelists of constrained fury: nobody writes better' – The Observer'Mesmerising . . . confirms Riley as one of Britain’s best' – The Telegraph‘A slim, impeccably controlled story that contains multitudes’ – The GuardianLaura 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.‘I love this book’ – Sarah Perry, award-winning author of The Essex Serpent‘Outstandingly brilliant’ – Claire-Louise Bennett, award-winning author of Big Kiss, Bye-Bye‘Riley’s prose is so electric, so alive with humour and insight and passion, that by the end you will want to stand up and cheer’ – Paul Murray, author of The Bee Sting

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026From the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of First Love, The Palm House is a sharply observed, slyly funny novel of enduring friendships and small mercies.‘This goes straight onto my list of favourite modern novels’ – The Times‘One of our finest novelists of constrained fury: nobody writes better’ – The Observer‘Mesmerising . . . confirms Riley as one of Britain’s best’ – The Telegraph‘A slim, impeccably controlled story that contains multitudes’ – The GuardianLaura 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. ‘I love this book’ – Sarah Perry, award-winning author of The Essex Serpent‘Outstandingly brilliant’ – Claire-Louise Bennett, award-winning author of Big Kiss, Bye-Bye‘Riley’s prose is so electric, so alive with humour and insight and passion, that by the end you will want to stand up and cheer’ – Paul Murray, author of The Bee StingNamed a Most Anticipated Book for 2026 by: Financial Times, The Times, The Observer, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, New Statesman, Good Housekeeping, Country & Town House, Shortlist, The New York Times, Irish Times, Vulture, LitHub and BBC Culture.

At thirty, Aislinn Kelly is an occasional novelist with a near-morbid attunement to the motives of those around her. Isolated, restless and stuck, she decamps to America - a default recourse - this time to an attic room in Indianapolis, to attempt once again the definitive act of self-salvage. There are sharp memories to contend with as the summer heats up, and not least regarding her family history, now revealed as so botched and pitiful it seems it might yet cancel her out. She's spent years evading the attentions of her unstable, bullying father, only to find her mother now cowering in a second rancid marriage. There are also friendships lost or ailing: with bibulous playwright Karl, sly poet Erwin, depressed bookshop-wallah Bronagh, and Aislinn's best friend Cathy, who has recently found God... Finally her thoughts turn to her last encounter with Jim Schmidt, a man she's loved for ten years, hasn't seen for five, yet still has to consider her opposite number in life.Opposed Positions is a startlingly frank novel about the human predicament, about love and its substitutes, disgraceful or otherwise. Some of these people want to be free - of themselves, of each other - and some have darker imperatives. Wry, shocking, perfectly observed and utterly heart-breaking, the novel moves towards its troubling conclusion: a painful appreciation of what it is we've come from, and what we might be heading for.

Carmel McKisco is wry, volatile and full of longing: a twenty-year-old girl working nights in a Manchester dive bar. Cut off from her family, and from Tony, her carefree ex, she forges strange alliances with her customers, and daydreams, half-heartedly, about escaping to Cornwall. Cold Water is a poignant picaresque of barmaids and barflies; eccentric individuals all somehow tethered to their past - not least Carmel herself, who is nurturing mordant fixations on both her lost love, Tony, and her washed-up adolescent hero: a singer from Macclesfield. As she spins out the days and nights of an unrelentingly rainy winter she finds herself compelled to confront her romantic preoccupations, for better or worse.

Returning to Manchester, her broken home, Esther moves back to the flat she used to share with her best friend Donna. Surrounded by empty gin bottles, with her past life safely taped up in stacked cardboard boxes, she proceeds to turn her back on a 'real world' that seems meaningless and absurd. Instead she lives in her own head. Then she meets Newton, a care-worn American wanderer with a drinker's face and an angel's smile. Newton changes everything. But for how long?

Joshua and Natalie share a vexed five-year history of sporadic encounters, explosive drunkenness and failed intercourse, spliced with sad intimations of true love. Natalie is attempting to start a new life in Manchester, but when Joshua calls unexpectedly and asks her to meet him in America she knows she has no choice but to go.Whilst wandering around the Blue Ridge Mountains or lying together for days in their cheap hotel room, they talk about their lives - about his ex-wife, and her dead family - and come to a surprising understanding.Shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize.

Returning to Manchester, her broken home, Esther moves back to the flat she used to share with her best friend Donna. Surrounded by empty gin bottles, with her past life safely taped up in stacked cardboard boxes, she proceeds to turn her back on a 'real world' that seems meaningless and absurd. Instead she lives in her own head. Then she meets Newton, a care-worn American wanderer with a drinker's face and an angel's smile. Newton changes everything. But for how long?

'A singular, devastating journey into the ungovernable reaches of the heart' ObserverSHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017Neve is a writer in her mid-30s married to an older man, Edwyn. For now they are in a place of relative peace, but their past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that led her to this marriage, she tells of other loves and other debts, from her bullying father and her self-involved mother to a musician who played her and a series of lonely flights from place to place.Drawing the reader into the battleground of her relationship, Neve spins a story of helplessness and hostility, an ongoing conflict in which both husband and wife have played a part. But is this, nonetheless, also a story of love?