
Sunday October 13th 2024
Gill, Sue and I recently spent a delightful evening at the Bury St. Edmunds Literature Festival, where Julia Wakelam, the Festival Chair and founder, was in conversation with author Clare Chambers in the beautiful and packed Unitarian Meeting House. Their conversation focused on Clare’s two most recent books, her writing process and her writing career.
Clare was an editor at Andre Deutsch for a number of years, starting at the company when Diana Athill was at the helm. She left to raise a family and to concentrate on her own writing. Her first novel was published in 1992 and she went on to have seven more novels published. They were well reviewed but had limited sales. Then, after a gap of ten years, Small Pleasures was published in 2020. It was a hit with critics and with readers, gaining a wide following through word of mouth and on social media. The novel is set in the suburbs of south east London in the 1950s and features a local journalist, called Jean, trapped in a limited and unsatisfactory life. Then a story drops into her lap, of a claimed virgin birth. Jean sets out to discover whether this is a miracle or a fraud. The novel was inspired by a real event, a 1950s newspaper investigation into a woman who claimed to be a virgin mother.
Clare’s most recent novel, Shy Creatures, was published in 2024 and was also inspired by a real event. She came across a newspaper article, dating from the 1950s, about a Bristol man who was discovered naked and dishevelled, with long hair and beard, living as a recluse with an elderly aunt. He had existed under the radar of neighbours and the authorities for decades. The ‘hidden man’ was taken to a local mental institution.

Clare wanted to write a different, better story for him and she was also interested in portraying a mental institution at a particular point in time, one which was moving away from potentially dangerous procedures and embracing gentler treatments. She set the story in the 1960s, a time of change. The protagonist is Helen, an art therapist at the institution to which the man, called William, was taken. Helen herself has a complicated life and has been having a long, unsatisfactory love affair with Gil, a married doctor. Helen learns that William is a talented artist and she wants to learn about his life. The novel moves forwards and backwards in time as she attempts to discover his hidden story. And, as Helen unveils William’s life, she also reflects on her own.
Julia and Clare discuss the main themes of the novel. An important theme is how people can be imprisoned and confined in different ways, ‘imprisonment of potential’. Institutions can imprison, with the survival of the institution at all costs taking precedence over the needs of the individual. But ‘relationships can have straitjackets of their own’; family, society and sexual politics can become a kind of straitjacket too.
Telling a story backwards and forwards in a dual timeline was a new and challenging narrative technique for Clare. She tends to start with a germ of truth to lend the book a sense of legitimacy. She begins with an idea, then works on the structure and plot and considers who gets to tell the story. But, while the idea or a real event is the starting point, she doesn’t chase new ideas and stories. She allows the stories to arrive. As she commented, ‘I want ideas to make the first move’.
It has taken time for Clare to achieve success. Before her breakthrough in 2020, she considered abandoning writing. But she encourages new writers to just keep writing. In her words, ‘To get published, you just have to write better’. An unexpected bonus of her recent success is that her earlier books are finding more and more readers. I have just finished reading The Editor’s Wife (2007), another book that I would thoroughly recommend.
Dymphna Crowe
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