During the initial half of the 1990s, I recall experiencing immense joy through the act of reading. Memorable literary debuts, such as those by Rachel Cusk, Nick Hornby, Kate Atkinson, and Louise Doughty, took permanent residence in my book collection. Among my top picks were Clare Chambers’s debut, Uncertain Terms, published in 1992, along with its successor, Back Trouble. I had previously believed that Chambers enjoyed seamless continuous success, so it came as a surprise to learn that she penned Small Pleasures, released in 2020, from a place of self-professed vulnerability and lack of confidence, having faced numerous years of remaining unpublished and having her backlist scantly printed.
Based on the remarkable real-life account of a German woman who proclaimed that she was blessed with a virgin birth, Small Pleasures resonated with both critics and readers, securing a position on the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist in 2021. Despite Chambers viewing her recent publication as having the ‘misfortunate status’ of being considered a second novel, it is, in fact, her 10th.
Her latest work, Shy Creatures, is not directly related to Small Pleasures, but it also has real-life connections. The plot is based on a peculiar incident from the 1950s where Bristol police stumbled upon a man living under the radar with an elderly aunt, remaining invisible to the authorities and unnoticed by the neighbourhood. Shifting the temporal and geographic context, Chambers sets the narrative a decade onward in London. The story is introduced through Helen Hansford, a single, intelligent art therapist in her 30s, practising in a psychiatric hospital. Apart from her young art-loving niece, Lorraine, she shares limited commonalities with her family. Helen is involved in a romantic entanglement with her married coworker, Gil, a charismatic psychiatrist who idolises RD Laing.
Described as a roller-coaster of emotional highs and lows, her relationship with Gil necessitates Helen, who is grounded in practicality, to continue navigating her sidelined life until Gil fulfils his promise of leaving his wife when his children grow older. Their relationship serves as a constant reminder of the balance of fate’s books – the euphoria of anticipation being invariably counteracted by a similar dip in spirits.
“Bella Mackie: ‘There was a family game where we’d discuss the ideal method to commit murder.’
Pat Barker’s The Voyage Home: A magnificent domestic saga set against the futile schemes of war.
In the spring, a local hospital is informed of an incident at a semi-ruins five miles away. William Tapping, a secluded 37-year-old man with a beard reaching his waist, is found at his ailing aunt Louisa’s residence. Louisa is taken to the hospital, while William ends up in Westbury Park. Upon meeting with Louisa to talk about William, Helen feels haunted by the conversation: “The responses were so casual, so heartily given, so close to sanity, yet underneath them lies the ruin of one man’s existence.” Helen recognises William as a proficient artist and delves into his past, hoping to uncover channels of support for him.
Initially, Shy Creatures looks to narrate Helen and charismatic egotist Gil’s story, and “their relationship’s weary routine,” but as it starts to intertwine with the narrative of the Tapping family, the boundary between Helen’s professional and personal life blurs. Fluctuating smoothly between 1964 and several decades back, the novel uncloaks William’s unsettled early years with three unmarried aunts. William has an innocent, earnest and literal personality as a child, becoming friends with a classmate at the boarding school where they are the only two boys aghast by the sight of another classmate brutalising a terrified infant mouse till its demise. Concurrently, as Helen is unravelling the history of the Tapping family, she is impelled to face the reality of being Gil’s covert lover: “her meagre acts of kindness, philanthropy, largesse were comparable to grains of sand thrown on a scale attempting to counterbalance the gigantic boulder of Wrong she was committing daily against Kath and The Children.”
In addition to the overly self-assured Gil, the characters in Chambers’s story are typically apprehensive, burdened with distressing pasts, or unsure, standing by on the sidelines. A significant delight in the novel lies in its authentic depiction of 1964 as a time lacking excitement, with wartime rationing still fresh in memory, Helen opting for the Third Programme over pop music, and Lorraine’s parents horrified by her aspiration for a lifestyle unlike their own. Since the release of Uncertain Terms, Chambers’s narratives have been distinctly marked by profound understanding of ordinary lives. It seems reductionist and unnecessary to me to label her as a writer of historical romance; she pens human experience with sincerity and empathy, spotlighting the transformative influence of love and benevolence. The character of William is especially unforgettable, with readers of Shy Creatures ardently hoping for a joyful childhood for him, even though he might have to delay it till his adulthood.