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

From the bestselling author of SMALL PLEASURES comes a new novel about love, family and the joy of freedom. This immersive, multi-layered novel follows an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital in 1960s Croydon who decides to unravel the story of an immensely talented mute patient.

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.

About the Author

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

Industry Reviews

I was worried this wouldn't be as good as the brilliant Small Pleasures, but it might be even better. Clare Chambers is a genius Wise, beautifully measured and as compelling as you want fiction to be - SUNDAY TIMES

I adored Shy Creatures and urge anyone with an interest in psychiatry, siblings, Croydon, buried trauma, adultery, the early 60s or simply humanity to seek it out