Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers, review: one virgin birth was a mystery, two seems odd
The seed for Small Pleasures was sown nearly 20 years ago, when Clare Chambers – who made her name with the 1998 comic romance Learning to Swim – heard about a competition, run by a local paper in 1955, to find a virgin mother.
Small Pleasures is set in 1957. Chambers’s protagonist, the tenderly depicted, tragic Jean Swinney, is a journalist at the North Kent Echo. She cares for her near-agoraphobic mother, her life an endless series of chores – except for the free half-hour twice a week when her mother takes a bath.
Her mundane life is shaken up when a Swiss seamstress called Gretchen writes in to the paper, claiming that her 10-year-old daughter Margaret was conceived “without the involvement of any man”. The story is assigned to Jean (“It’s women’s interest, after all”), and a scientific investigation is launched alongside Jean’s own sleuthing. Jean’s journalistic integrity is swiftly threatened by the “tug of friendship”; soon she’s an “unofficial aunt” to Margaret – and trying to subdue feelings for Gretchen’s husband.
It’s a book heavy with repression – always lightly and compassionately rendered by Chambers, the smallest of details betraying enormous sadness. “Eating out was something other people did. Over the years she had trained herself not to mind.” A cry is scheduled “between seven and seven-thirty, when she had got home from work and done her chores”.
Jean can’t even bring herself to resent her mother properly, overcome by guilt and sorrow at their damaged relationship. In an exquisitely loaded moment, Jean realises she doesn’t know the colour of her mother’s eyes because it’s been so long since they made eye contact.
The mystery of “Our Lady of Sidcup” is shunted aside by the genteel personal drama. And the explanation, when it comes, is less troubling than Jean’s reaction to it, adding a little bitterness to her Miss Marple antics. Small Pleasures is no twee romance, but a quietly compelling novel of duty and desire.
Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers is published by W&N at £14.99 (ebook £7.99). To order your copy, call 0844 871 1514 or visit the Telegraph Bookshop
