Edmund Putnam, days away from the end of his 50th year, finds that his solitary life is about to change. The magazine to which he has given his best decades faces closure, and Edmund will likely lose his job this coming Monday morning. But before this fateful prospect can arrive there are others, no less daunting: a date, and a birthday.Putnam's great friend, Laura, worries for him. She is a decade or so younger, employed by the same magazine but with the prospect of escape; she has been offered the opportunity to leave the country and work abroad. But can she bear to take it?Meanwhile Putnam's father, Martin, has found a new lease of life. He has fallen in love with a waitress at a local cafe, and decided to rescue her from her brutish husband.Unfolding over the course of a single weekend, as these three drifters assess their fates and their futures, THE PALM HOUSE reads between the lines of modern life in a country slipping back into its past, and presents Gwendoline Riley at her heartfelt, bravura best.