Publishers Weekly
08/30/2021
In Chambers’s affecting latest (after the YA mystery Burning Secrets), the year is 1957 and Jean Swinney is a single Englishwoman approaching 40 who cares for her demanding mother and lives for the small pleasures in life—like pottering in her vegetable patch or loosening her girdle at the end of the day. Jean works as features editor for the North Kent Echo. Her new assignment is to interview Gretchen Tilbury, who claims to have delivered a child through virgin birth. Wanting to keep an open mind, Jean meets with the no-nonsense Gretchen, who was confined to an all-female nursing home, St. Cecilia’s, with rheumatoid arthritis at the time of conception. Jean also meets Gretchen’s charming 10-year-old daughter, Margaret, and her dedicated husband, Howard. Jean arranges for Gretchen and Margaret to undergo medical tests at Charing Cross Hospital to prove if parthenogenesis actually took place. As the months pass, Jean becomes more and more enmeshed in the lives of the Tilbury family even as her friendship with Howard threatens to turn into something more. Chambers does an excellent job of recreating the austere texture of post-WWII England. In Jean, the author creates a character who strives admirably to escape her cloistered existence. Chambers plays fair with Gretchen’s mystery, tenderly illuminating the hidden yearnings of small lives. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
Gripping...penetrates the secret hopes and passionate inner lives of ordinary working people. The characters provoke so much empathy, readers may have trouble remembering that they’re fictional.” — Booklist
“Small Pleasures is an almost flawlessly written tale of genuine, grown-up romantic anguish. Written in prose that is clipped as closely as suburban hedges, this is a book about seemingly mild people concealing turbulent feelings.” — Johanna Thomas-Corr, Sunday Times
“I've had about five people recommend this to me, which is quite rare... It's a novel about the last throw of the dice, the last chance perhaps of finding a life of happiness when you’ve had a struggle. The writing is beautiful. This is also the first novel Chambers has written for 10 years, which I find really inspiring—she’s come back with this absolute humdinger. It’s just so nice to read a book by someone who’s so confident with their talent.” — Jessie Burton, bestselling author of The Miniaturist
“Small Pleasures is a tender and heart-rending tale that will draw you in from the first page and keep you gripped until the very end. Exquisitely compelling!” — Ruth Hogan, author of The Keeper of Lost Things
“Part mystery, part love story, part reflection on changing attitudes to sexuality in post-war Britain, Small Pleasures is a disarmingly gentle read that quietly builds to a devastating conclusion.” — The Scotsman
"With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details." — New York Times
“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, bestselling author of One Day
"An irresistible novel—wry, perceptive and quietly devastating." — Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday
“A brilliant book… A love story between people who are not usually the leading players in love story… I found it incredibly absorbing." — Kathleen MacMahon, The Irish Times
Kathleen MacMahon
A brilliant book… A love story between people who are not usually the leading players in love story… I found it incredibly absorbing."
Hephzibah Anderson
"An irresistible novel—wry, perceptive and quietly devastating."
Johanna Thomas-Corr
Small Pleasures is an almost flawlessly written tale of genuine, grown-up romantic anguish. Written in prose that is clipped as closely as suburban hedges, this is a book about seemingly mild people concealing turbulent feelings.”
Ruth Hogan
Small Pleasures is a tender and heart-rending tale that will draw you in from the first page and keep you gripped until the very end. Exquisitely compelling!”
David Nicholls
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."
New York Times
"With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details."
The Scotsman
Part mystery, part love story, part reflection on changing attitudes to sexuality in post-war Britain, Small Pleasures is a disarmingly gentle read that quietly builds to a devastating conclusion.”
Jessie Burton
I've had about five people recommend this to me, which is quite rare... It's a novel about the last throw of the dice, the last chance perhaps of finding a life of happiness when you’ve had a struggle. The writing is beautiful. This is also the first novel Chambers has written for 10 years, which I find really inspiring—she’s come back with this absolute humdinger. It’s just so nice to read a book by someone who’s so confident with their talent.
Booklist
Gripping...penetrates the secret hopes and passionate inner lives of ordinary working people. The characters provoke so much empathy, readers may have trouble remembering that they’re fictional.
Booklist
Gripping...penetrates the secret hopes and passionate inner lives of ordinary working people. The characters provoke so much empathy, readers may have trouble remembering that they’re fictional.
Kirkus Reviews
2021-08-18
In the spirit of Barbara Pym's novels and the classic film Brief Encounters, Chambers provides an updated portrait of the vaunted British upper lip and its associated postwar values.
When the suburban North Kent Echo runs a story on parthenogenesis in small animals, it gets a curious letter to the editor in response: "I have always believed my own daughter (now ten) to have been born without the involvement of any man," writes Mrs. Gretchen Tilbury of Sidcup. When the opportunity arises to investigate this intriguing virgin birth, Jean Swinney is eager to take on the assignment; it will be a nice distraction from her usual humdrum work. Given the social patterns of 1950s Britain, Jean’s beat consists chiefly of feature pieces of appeal to housewives, money-saving tips, recipes, and the like. Jean’s personal life is equally nonstimulating, as she shares a joyless home with her agoraphobic and needy mother, and she finds a welcome respite in her growing attachment to the Tilbury family. As clues to the mystery of “Our Lady of Sidcup” gradually reveal themselves to Jean, she finds herself in a relationship that might provide her with a last chance at domestic contentment. An awareness of the high cost of that potential happiness weighs heavily on Jean, and a bittersweet aura pervades Chambers’ gentle sketch of an unassuming, highly intelligent woman daring to contravene convention. In a departure from similar, yet tamer, depictions of postwar English life, Chambers acknowledges a broad range of human experience. Jean’s foibles, along with those of her irksome mother and other characters, are presented with sympathy, but readers in search of comfortable solutions will have to reassess their need to tie everything up with a vintage-style bow.
Chambers’ tone is sweet, which is not the same as saccharine.
