PositiveThe BafflerTender for a Riley novel, offering a quiet redemption in enduring friendships, where understanding can still take root in rare, flickering moments ... The Palm House is digressive, arranged like an emptied pocket, with spareness that can come off as thinness, as much blank space as ellipsis. Scenes accrete with puzzling relation, the past and the present drift up and overlay one another ... Riley seems to be asking what, if anything, can we keep of the disappearing world—traditions, relationships, a way of being—and is clear-eyed in the face of nostalgia: Things weren’t always better ... There is a thrilling element to Riley’s work ... Suffused with a susurrating darkness.
RaveThe BafflerTender for a Riley novel, offering a quiet redemption in enduring friendships, where understanding can still take root in rare, flickering moments ... The Palm House is digressive, arranged like an emptied pocket, with spareness that can come off as thinness, as much blank space as ellipsis ... There is a thrilling element to Riley’s work that is amniotic-dark.
