Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers review – trauma unearthed

The follow-up to Small Pleasures is set in a mid-century psychiatric hospital, as an art therapist delves into a patient’s past

Following up a dark horse triumph such as Clare Chambers’s 2020 novel Small Pleasures can present a challenge. Chambers had been steadily but quietly published, and then had a gap of almost a decade before that breakthrough ninth novel became a critical and word-of-mouth hit. Longlisted for the Women’s prize, this quietly dazzling work was rightly acknowledged as a small masterpiece.

Her 10th novel, Shy Creatures, confirms her 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. Shy Creatures returns to the mid-century, profoundly English suburbia of Small Pleasures, is also inspired by a real event, and is sometimes slower but just as quirky, acutely observed and beautifully written as its predecessor.

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