Shy Creatures
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 mute, 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.
Reviews
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.
Wonderful
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.
Beautiful . . . A rich and tender story of kindness and compassion and the survival of the human spirit against enormous odds.
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.
(Chambers) excels at illuminating seemingly ‘unimportant’ lives.
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.
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 beautiful, immersive, pitch-perfect novel.
A tender, moving story.
Chambers again inhabits the period detail with an almost paradoxical combination of ease and relish.
SHY CREATURES confirms (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.
A beautiful story of unfolding secrets and unforeseen consequences, filled with moments that are somehow restrained and astute and gorgeously written all at the same time.
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.
Chambers casts a tender, wry eye over ensuing tensions, without flinching from their darker roots. She likewise retains a sense of mystery around her character's pasts, while also offering hope for their futures.
Cleverly constructed.
This immersive novel pays tribute to the value of kindness and compassion when set against the tides of human frailty.
SHY CREATURES offers a satisfyingly plotted combination of slow burn mystery and a deftly-drawn portrait of an unmarried woman in an era where that wasn't such an easy thing to be.
(Chambers) writes with honesty and compassion about the human experience, and the redemptive power of love and kindness.
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 worthy descendant of Barbara Pym, with her own intentions and style, Chambers is crafting straightforward narrative that’s old-fashioned in the best, fad-defying way. Sometimes, it’s daring to be quiet.
A compassionate story about love, family and the life-changing impact of kindness.
Clare Chambers has become a kind of bard of English suburbia with her bittersweet stories about lonely people concealing turbulent emotions and bizarre secrets.
Entwining these present and past narratives, Chambers poignantly evokes the consequences of certain “terribly British qualities — shame, silence, avoidance of unpleasantness.”
SHY CREATURES is one of those rarities in literary fiction, a quiet celebration of the complex human interactions that form lasting genuine friendships and heartfelt relationships that are retained in golden memories.
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