Small Pleasures

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, author of ONE DAY * Perfect. * India Knight * Small lives, love and loneliness, wit and despair all wrapped in an unexpected mystery and placed in a perfectly-realised 50s setting. Effortless to read, but every sentence lingers in the mind. * Lissa Evans, author of OLD BAGGAGE * This is one of the most tender, beautiful books I have ever read. Please, please order it now for July. I honestly don't want you to be without it. It is exquisite. * Lucy Mangan * 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. I think there's this discourse in our culture that you've got to have everything done in your first book ... But Chambers has been away for 10 years and 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. I'm glad she's having this renaissance. * Jessie Burton * Quietly remarkable... Small Pleasures is no small pleasure. -- Andrew Billen * THE TIMES * 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... one of the great strengths of the book is its tender, atmospheric descriptions of England: wet leaves, misted windows, the "melancholy sense of approaching dusk". Small Pleasures succeeds in creating one of those enclosed fictional worlds that, however desolate, has its own rules, its own flavour and its own charm. -- Johanna Thomas-Corr * THE SUNDAY TIMES * There's compassion and quiet humour to be found in this tale of a putative virgin birth in postwar suburban London... Chambers's eye for drab, undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity. -- Alfred Hickling * GUARDIAN * An irresistible novel - wry, perceptive and quietly devastating. -- Hephzibah Anderson * MAIL ON SUNDAY * Small Pleasures is no twee romance, but a quietly compelling novel of duty and desire. -- Francesca Carington * THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH * Wonderful. * Richard Osman * A wonderful novel. I loved it. * Nina Stibbe * Miraculous. * Tracy Chevalier * A beautiful and moving read set in 1950s suburbia that'll be on bookseller tables across the land this summer -- Francesca Brown * STYLIST * This is a dazzling, exquisitely written story of how happiness and even love can find us when we least expect it. -- Sarra Manning * RED * There are small pleasures aplenty in Clare Chambers' quietly observed, 1950s-set story . . . Chambers' novel combines a startling storyline with an engagingly nuanced portrait of post-war suburban femininity -- Claire Allfree * METRO * A stunning novel to steal your heart. * WOMAN & HOME * A wonderfully compassionate imagining of the post-war years, darned with the fine skeins of love. -- Kerry Fowler * SAINSBURYS MAGAZINE * I loved this novel, which simmers with repressed emotions, and the gut punch of an ending really stayed with me. -- Jo Finney * GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, Book of the Month * The glorious literary equivalent of pulling the duvet over your head... Both an absorbing mystery and a tender love story - and the ending is devastating. Chambers is a writer who finds the truth in things. If you admire Tessa Hadley or Anne Tyler (and there are shades of Barbara Pym too), then this is one for you. -- Alice O'Keefe * The Bookseller, Book of the Month * It is a glorious piece of storytelling where powerful emotions and awful revelations are treated wi

Clare Chambers's first job after university was working for Diana Athill at Andr 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.