10% off all books and free delivery over £40
Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.

Small Pleasures

"A beautiful, bittersweet story of loneliness, longing and love sewn up in an exquisite mystery - you won’t want this mid-century treasure to end."

View All Editions

£9.99 £8.99

In Stock. Same day dispatch on orders before 3pm.

Add To Wishlist
Write A Review

LoveReading Says

LoveReading Says

Hauntingly tender, and written with powerful grace, Clare Chambers’s Small Pleasures is an absolute joy from start to finish. It’s 1957 in suburban Kent, where Jean writes for a local newspaper with every aspect of her life still dominated by her contrary, controlling mother as Jean approaches forty. No post-work drinks with colleagues. No friends. No romance. Enter Gretchen Tilbury, an elegant Swiss woman who writes to the paper claiming her daughter was the result of a virgin birth. As Jean investigates the case, she becomes close to Gretchen, her kind, witty husband Howard, and the alleged miraculous daughter, all four of them finding comfortable joy in each other’s company. “You’ve stirred us out of our routine,” Howard remarks, to which Jean responds, “I would have thought it was the other way about.”

While researching Gretchen’s youth, Jean inadvertently sends shockwaves through the Tilbury family when she reconnects Gretchen to a powerful figure from her past. At the same time, she and Howard find themselves falling for each other, both of them remaining faithful to Gretchen, graciously skirting their attraction - until it’s right to act.

The novel features some of the most finely drawn, endearing characters I’ve encountered in recent contemporary fiction. For all her lonely frustration, Jean isn’t one to wallow. She’s pragmatic, with ripples of not-quite-regret lapping beneath her smooth, reasoned surface - a woman “who took pride in her ability to conceal unruly emotions.” Her domesticity pieces for the paper have something of Carrie Bradshaw’s musings about them, albeit without any in-your-face sex in the city (or the suburbs, in Jean’s case), with their apparently humdrum themes humorously paralleling soul-stirring events in her own life.

Laying bare a quivering three-way tug between obligation, propriety and passion, and the inexplicable way thunderbolt-bonds are formed between similar-souled individuals, Jean’s conflicts and chance to love truly get under your skin. What a remarkable book, with a dagger-sharp climax that will pierce your heart.

Joanne Owen

Books of the Month
Star Books

Find This Book In

Primary Genre Historical Fiction
Other Genres:
Recommendations:

About

Press Reviews

Author

Collections Featuring This Book

Book Awards Featuring This Book

You Might Also Like...

One Night in Winter

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Paperback

In Stock

£8.99 £9.99

Go Tell the Bees that I am Gone

Diana Gabaldon

Paperback

In Stock

£8.99 £9.99

The Thread

Victoria Hislop

Paperback

In Stock

£8.99 £9.99

A History of Burning

Janika Oza

Hardback

In Stock

£15.29 £16.99

Free Love

Tessa Hadley

Paperback

In Stock

£8.99 £9.99

Dancing with Eva

Alan Judd

Paperback

In Stock

£9.89 £10.99