One of the great strengths of Chambers’ writing is her ability to recreate the time in which she sets her work. It is not just a matter of getting the physical details right but also re-creating the social attitudes. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer)
Clare Chambers’ last novel, Small Pleasures, scored considerable success some four years ago, and here she returns to the same territory – middle-class urban England in the mid-20th Century. The plot of Shy Creatures ranges between the immediate pre-war years up to the 1960s – a time of huge social change.
One of her two main characters is Helen Hansford, a 30-something art therapist working in a psychiatric hospital, to the horror of her sour and conventional mother. What would horrify mother even more, rigidly adhering as she does to the social mores of a time that is rapidly disappearing, is that Helen is involved in an affair with Gil, a smooth-talking, charming and married psychiatrist at the same institution. The reader soon becomes aware that the relationship is unlikely to have a happy outcome, but in the meantime, Helen is besotted.
And then William Tapping is admitted to the hospital. He has been found in a crumbling house, with his elderly and unwell aunt. His hair and beard are long and unkempt, he appears to be mute and it is obvious that he has been there, unseen and below the radar, for many years, even right through the war. Helen persuades him into her art room, and sees his latent talent.
She then sets out to discover his past story. This is told in sections alternating with action in the characters’ present and Helen and the reader slowly unravel what happened to William to make him what he is, while Helen’s personal life is also explored.
One of the great strengths of Chambers’ writing is her ability to recreate the time in which she sets her work. It is not just a matter of getting the physical details right but also re-creating the social attitudes. While Helen’s affair with Gil would raise few eyebrows now, it would have been deeply shocking in the circles in which they moved in the 1960s. And the author has researched the attitudes to and the treatment of mental health conditions at the time. It makes for a thoroughly convincing setting.
My only criticism of what is a compassionate and entertaining novel is that the ending is a little bit too good to be true. The reader will want the characters to survive and thrive, but perhaps it is all just too neat. Still, Shy Creatures is a great read. - Margaret von Klemperer
Shy Creatures is
published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Posts
