Shy Creatures: The perfect summer read from the bestselling author of Small Pleasures - Softcover

Chambers, Clare

Softcover

ISBN 10: 139960256X ISBN 13: 9781399602563

Publisher: W&N, 2025

Synopsis

From the author of bestselling sensation Small Pleasures comes an extraordinary story of love, family and the joy of freedom.

'Clare Chambers is a genius' INDIA KNIGHT

'Just as good - if not better - than Small Pleasures' INDEPENDENT

'As compelling as you want fiction to be' SUNDAY TIMES

'One of our most talented authors' GUARDIAN

'Extraordinary' FINANCIAL TIMES

It all started the weekend the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park . . .

Croydon, 1964. Art therapist Helen Hansford is working in a psychiatric hospital, where she has been having passionate but precarious affair with her married colleague, the charismatic Dr Gil Rudden.

Helen's structured life is upended when William Tapping - a silent, thirty-seven-year-old man with a beard down to his waist - arrives at the hospital. As Helen helps William express himself through art, she becomes increasingly entangled in his mysterious past.

Inspired by a true story, Shy Creatures is a life-affirming exploration of loneliness, love and the quiet forces that shape our lives, reminding us that freedom can come in unexpected forms.

'Reading a Clare Chambers novel can feel like entering a modest bungalow and finding yourself in a cathedral' SUNDAY TIMES

'A warm, multilayered mystery with all the charms of Small Pleasures' i PAPER

'A lively, funny, forgiving novel' PATRICK GALE

'Chambers is such a humane writer and this novel is full of exquisite detail' EVENING STANDARD

'A beautiful story of unfolding secrets and unforeseen consequences' HOLLY GRAMAZIO, author of THE HUSBANDS


*Small Pleasures was a Silver Award bestseller according to Nielsen BookScan UK, 10 November 2023

About this title

About the Author

Clare Chambers's first job after university was working for Diana Athill at André Deutsch. Her first novel Uncertain Terms was published in 1992 and she is the author of eight other novels.
Small Pleasures, her first work of fiction in ten years, became a word-of-mouth hit on publication, was selected for BBC 2 Between the Covers book club and for BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, and was selected as a Book of the Year by The Times, the Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, Spectator, Metro, Red and Good Housekeeping. It also won Pageturner of the Year Award at the British Book Awards 2022 and was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2021.

From the Back Cover

A magnificent novel. I loved it to its bones' EMMA STONEX

'Completely absorbing' LISSA EVANS

'A lively, funny, forgiving novel' PATRICK GALE

'A rich and tender story of kindness and compassion' RUTH HOGAN



In all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.



Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with Gil: a charismatic, married doctor.



One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen's home. A thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.



Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.

Edition details

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 139960256X
• ISBN 13: 9781399602563
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400