Shy Creatures

From the author of bestselling sensation Small Pleasures comes a life-affirming exploration of love, loneliness and the quiet forces that shape our lives.

'Beautiful, tender, moving. Clare Chambers is a genius'
INDIA KNIGHT

'A warm, multi-layered mystery brimming with all the same nostalgia, wit and tenderness as Small Pleasures'
i PAPER

'Like entering a modest bungalow and finding yourself in a cathedral'
SUNDAY TIMES

'One of our most talented authors'
GUARDIAN

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 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.

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

'Extraordinary'
FINANCIAL TIMES

'A lively, funny, forgiving novel'
PATRICK GALE

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

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


Genre: Literary Fiction

"Shy Creatures reads easily and delightfully and yet is rich with emotional truth, and completely absorbing. I loved it, and didn't want it to end." - Lissa Evans

"I adored Shy Creaturesand eked out this addictive treat as long as I could and now can only urge anyone with an interest in psychiatry, siblings, Croydon, buried trauma, adultery, the early 60s or simply humanity to seek it out. Once again, Clare Chambers reveals her unflinching grasp of human fallibility and eye for the resonant detail that make the reader care deeply about her characters' fates. A lively, funny, forgiving novel which I bet will do just as well as Small Pleasures." - Patrick Gale

"Beautiful . . . A rich and tender story of kindness and compassion and the survival of the human spirit against enormous odds." - Ruth Hogan

"Shy Creatures is a magnificent novel, elegantly written, beautifully devised and radiant with treasures to surprise and delight. It is both a compelling mystery about a lonely man with a hidden past and a deeply involving study of human frailty, divided loyalties, and what it means to help someone. Clare Chambers is a writer of formidable skill and this is her best work yet, penned with such intelligence, tenderness and emotional acuity, it took my breath away. I loved it to its bones." - Emma Stonex