If someone merely gave a précis of the plot of Small Pleasures, it might sound unutterably bleak, but in the skilled and compassionate hands of Clare Chambers, it is pure delight. There is glorious dry humour, a clever plot and pitch-perfect period detail.
The novel is set in 1950s England, a time when any pleasures for the suburban middle classes were inevitably small – the first cigarette of the day, a bar of chocolate, the unexpected treat of a day out or a new acquaintance. Jean Swinney is a reporter on a local newspaper and as the only woman on the staff looks after the household hints and so-called women’s interest stories, small and parochial ones. Then one day something with a bit more meat on it lands on her desk: a local woman is claiming that her ten-year-old daughter was the product of a virgin birth. No man was involved. If the story pans out, it will be the making of Jean, and the paper.
There was no DNA testing then, and the idea of parthenogenesis was causing interest in scientific circles. So Jean sets off to meet the Tilburys. Like anyone who has ever worked in a newsroom, for Jean a story like that sets the cynicism antennae quivering. But she finds herself liking Gretchen, her daughter Margaret and her initially unprepossessing husband Howard. And the story seems curiously believable. Gretchen was in a convent sanatorium dormitory with rheumatoid arthritis when the conception must have occurred.
Jean’s life becomes deeply involved with the Tilbury family, relishing the contact and the investigation. It is a relief from her humdrum life which involves her dull and largely unappreciated work and looking after her querulous and increasingly frail mother. Chambers depicts beautifully the society of the post-war years with its shibboleths, a world more easily shocked and more gullible than ours, but in its own way more resilient and kinder.
The tension is maintained throughout, though the questions that are asked are small ones in the wider scheme of life. Even the minor characters are rounded and believable and the sympathy we feel, particularly for Jean and Howard, is genuine. Small Pleasures is the sort of book that will stick in the memory for a long time after the final, tragic, page is turned.
Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN-13: 9781474613910 - Margaret von Klemperer
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