Description

From the author of bestselling sensation Small Pleasures comes an extraordinary story of love, family and the joy of freedom.
‘Clare Chambers is a genius’ INDIA KNIGHT

‘Just as good – if not better – than Small Pleasures’ INDEPENDENT

‘As compelling as you want fiction to be’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘One of our most talented authors’ GUARDIAN

‘Extraordinary’ FINANCIAL TIMES

It all started the weekend the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park . . .

Croydon, 1964. Art therapist Helen Hansford is working in a psychiatric hospital, where she has been having passionate but precarious affair with her married colleague, the charismatic Dr Gil Rudden.

Helen’s structured life is upended when William Tapping – a silent, thirty-seven-year-old man with a beard down to his waist – arrives at the hospital. As Helen helps William express himself through art, she becomes increasingly entangled in his mysterious past.

Inspired by a true story, Shy Creatures is a life-affirming exploration of loneliness, love and the quiet forces that shape our lives, reminding us that freedom can come in unexpected forms.

‘Reading a Clare Chambers novel can feel like entering a modest bungalow and finding yourself in a cathedral’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘A warm, multilayered mystery with all the charms of Small Pleasures’ i PAPER

‘A lively, funny, forgiving novel’ PATRICK GALE

‘Chambers is such a humane writer and this novel is full of exquisite detail’ EVENING STANDARD

‘A beautiful story of unfolding secrets and unforeseen consequences’ HOLLY GRAMAZIO, author of THE HUSBANDS

*Small Pleasures was a Silver Award bestseller according to Nielsen BookScan UK, 10 November 2023

Publisher Review

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 * LISSA EVANS * beautiful . . . A rich and tender story of kindness and compassion and the survival of the human spirit against enormous odds * RUTH HOGAN * A very fine book . . . It’s witty and sharp and reads like something by Barbara Pym or Anita Brookner, without ever feeling like a pastiche * DAVID NICHOLLS (about SMALL PLEASURES) * An almost flawlessly written tale of genuine, grown-up romantic anguish. Written in prose that is clipped as closely as suburban hedges * SUNDAY TIMES (about SMALL PLEASURES) * Beautiful * Jessie Burton, about SMALL PLEASURES *