PINTEREST
BLOGLOVIN
GOODREADS
In all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.
Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with Gil: a charismatic, married doctor.
One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen’s home. A thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.
Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Format: ebook, audiobook, hardback (29 August 2024) | paperback (5 June 2025)
Source: Borrowed from Library
MY THOUGHTS
I’ve read several of Clare’s books which I so enjoyed and I couldn’t wait to get into Shy Creatures. I wasn’t disappointed.
Set in Croydon in 1964, 34 year old Helen Hansford is an art therapist at Westbury Park psychiatric hospital. She is not a trained counsellor but her role is to help and support patients to express themselves through art. Her three year affair with married colleague Dr Gil Rudden leaves her conflicted; she feels guilty about his wife and family but still can’t give him up – she has little else in her life apart from Gil and her job. However when 37 year old William Tapping is admitted to the hospital together with his elderly aunt Louisa, she feels drawn to him, not in a romantic way but rather wanting to know more about this mute dishevelled man who appears to have spent most of his adult life shut away at home.
William’s story is an intriguing one and there is an air of mystery about his life. We first meet the adult William in 1964 but whilst the main story moves forward, his goes back to earlier times. William’s life with his three maiden aunts was one of secrecy and loneliness, they weren’t unkind but being of a certain time and social standing had their own reasons for their actions.
The Afterword reveals the author was inspired by a true story to create William and a life around him. It certainly is a captivating read with superb characters and many layers which takes the story to some dark places. William’s story was rather saddening for the life he had been forced to have but there was a hopeful and uplifting element too. Families and their intricate relationships form much of the background and secrets are revealed which have a devastating impact. Standout characters for me were Helen and Marion, both for their empathy and their desire to help and Helen in particular was forced to confront some painful home truths. The story has a timeless feel and despite its 1960’s setting felt just as relevant as one set today. Clare’s writing is so very readable without over description or wasted words, I was immediately hooked from the first page and totally invested in the lives of Helen and William. Certainly one to recommend.
Clare Chambers was born in south east London in 1966. She studied English at Oxford and spent the year after graduating in New Zealand, where she wrote her first novel, Uncertain Terms, published when she was 25. She has since written eight further novels, including Learning to Swim (Century 1998) which won the Romantic Novelists’ Association best novel award and was adapted as a Radio 4 play, and In a Good Light (Century 2004) which was longlisted for the Whitbread best novel prize.
Clare began her career as a secretary at the publisher André Deutsch, when Diana Athill was still at the helm. They not only published her first novel, but made her type her own contract. In due course she went on to become a fiction and non-fiction editor there herself, until leaving to raise a family and concentrate on her own writing. Some of the experiences of working for an eccentric, independent publisher in the pre-digital era found their way into her novel The Editor’s Wife (Century, 2007). When her three children were teenagers, inspired by their reading habits, she produced two YA novels, Bright Girls (HarperCollins 2009) and Burning Secrets (HarperCollins 2011). Her most recent novel is Small Pleasures (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020).
She takes up a post as Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Kent in September 2020. She lives with her husband in south east London and generally has her nose in a book.
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