About the Book: As Edmund Putnam approaches his fiftieth birthday, his solitary life is thrown into uncertainty when the magazine he has devoted decades to faces closure and he risks losing his job. His friend Laura must decide whether to leave the country for a new life abroad, while Edmund’s father Martin unexpectedly falls in love and attempts to rescue a waitress from her troubled marriage. Unfolding over one pivotal weekend, The Palm House is an intimate and atmospheric literary novel about friendship, love, ageing, work, change and the uncertain future of a society confronting its past.