From the Women’s Prize longlisted, British Book Award-winning, bestselling author of Small Pleasures, a new novel about love, family and the joy of freedom.
‘I was worried this wouldn’t be as good as the brilliant Small Pleasures, but it might be even better. Clare Chambers is a genius’ INDIA KNIGHT
‘Wise, beautifully measured and as compelling as you want fiction to be’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘A tender, absorbing novel . . . And it’s just as good – if not better – than her last’ INDEPENDENT
‘Shy Creatures confirms Clare Chambers as one of our most talented writers’ GUARDIAN
In all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.
Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with Gil: a charismatic, married doctor.
One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen’s home. A thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.
Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.
‘A magnificent novel. I loved it to its bones’ EMMA STONEX
‘A lively, funny, forgiving novel’ PATRICK GALE
‘Completely absorbing’ LISSA EVANS
‘A rich and tender story of kindness and compassion’ RUTH HOGAN
*Small Pleasures was a Silver Award bestseller according to Nielsen BookScan UK, 10 November 2023
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Reviews
Another thoughtful and deeply sympathetic performance
An arresting and cinematic jewel of a novel. I admire the way Chambers writes with such compassion for her characters. She's a true virtuoso of human emotion, and the deftness of her light touch is simply stunning. Small Pleasures was one of my favorite reads of the last few years, and her follow up did not disappoint
A tender, absorbing novel . . . And it's just as good - if not better - than her last
I adored Shy Creatures and eked out this addictive treat as long as I could and now can only urge anyone with an interest in psychiatry, siblings, Croydon, buried trauma, adultery, the early 60s or simply humanity to seek it out. Once again, Clare Chambers reveals her unflinching grasp of human fallibility and eye for the resonant detail that make the reader care deeply about her characters' fates. A lively, funny, forgiving novel which I bet will do just as well as Small Pleasures
Shy Creatures confirms Clare Chambers as one of our most talented writers, inhabiting something of the territory of Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Taylor and placing her outside contemporary fashions, although there are echoes of Tessa Hadley and Sarah Waters . . . Chambers's exquisite prose is a consistent pleasure, while the acuity of her observation possesses beauty and universality . . . Dark humour rumbles beneath even her most melancholy evocations; irony and compassion weave through her portraits of repressed lives that finally glimmer with some hope of liberation
A captivating story
Shy Creatures is a magnificent novel, elegantly written, beautifully devised and radiant with treasures to surprise and delight. It is both a compelling mystery about a lonely man with a hidden past and a deeply involving study of human frailty, divided loyalties, and what it means to help someone. Clare Chambers is a writer of formidable skill and this is her best work yet, penned with such intelligence, tenderness and emotional acuity, it took my breath away. I loved it to its bones
A beautiful, immersive, pitch-perfect novel
Reading a Clare Chambers novel can feel like entering a modest bungalow and finding yourself in a cathedral. The low ceilings and cramped passages of her novels, which record the placid lives of mid-century English suburbanites, open into high, mysterious spaces where stories of love and turbulent emotions play out - sometimes in unpredictable ways . . . This is writing of the highest quality. Wise, beautifully measured and as compelling as you want fiction to be
A satisfyingly plotted combination of slow-burn mystery and a deftly drawn portrait of an unmarried woman in an era where that was not such an easy thing to be . . . stirring and absorbing
Shy Creatures reads easily and delightfully and yet is rich with emotional truth, and completely absorbing. I loved it, and didn't want it to end
Beautiful . . . A rich and tender story of kindness and compassion and the survival of the human spirit against enormous odds
Absolutely beautiful - tender, moving, so clever about human beings and human frailty, and about love. It is also laugh out loud funny in places. As with Small Pleasures, the little telling details are brilliantly done. Clare Chambers is a genius
A tender, moving story
Shy Creatures is a warm, multi-layered mystery brimming with all the same nostalgia, wit and tenderness as Small Pleasures, the 2020 novel which made this author so beloved