Book Review: Small Pleasures, Clare Chambers

 Small Pleasures, Clare Chambers

My rating: 3 stars

1957, the suburbs of south east London.

Jean Swinney is a journalist on a local paper, trapped in a life of duty and disappointment from which there is no escape. 

When a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. 

As the investigation turns her quiet life inside out, Jean is suddenly given an unexpected chance at friendship, love and - possibly - happiness. 

But there will, inevitably, be a price to pay.

This one was a weird one. It was okay when I was reading it, but I did struggle to pick it up once I’d put it down. This was largely due to the narrative voice. We spend our time intrusively inside Jean’s head. Only in the last chapter do we focalise on Howard. The fact that we spend our time floating around with Jean, means the narrative is frankly borrrrring. Her reserved and respectable nature is soooo frustrating to read. Jean is annoying and obvious and maybe that means she’s been cleverly written. But that still didn’t help with the enjoyment of the novel, or the unravelling of the mystery. It made any slight comment made on the goings-on of the story, soooo obvious. Specifically that thing with Howard. SO obvious from the first time Gretchen mentioned her having to call her husband at work. 

The whole “virgin birth” storyline just was not that compelling for me, but I suppose it made for a vaguely hooking plot. I think the denouement of the pregnancy was fairly obvious, that the reality of an actual virgin birth was too much to believe. Then there’s all the twists and turns along the way, but ones I didn’t feel compelled to emotionally connect to. The writing felt heavy and clunky and, at times, lazy.

The inclusion of the Sapphic characters felt forced - it exists only to reinforce the central, heteronormative relationship. It’s literally a minor plot development that conveniently allows Jean to slide her hand into Howard’s, on their weirdly obsessive dynamic. The way Gretchen almost immediately drops Martha seeks to create a “tension” towards the end of the novel. Will Howard return to his family or continue with the journalist he just met and has an undeniable connection with? Ooooh I’m nervous... No, that’s unfair. I didn’t hate this story but it did frustrate me with its combined simplicity and complicated nature. It felt like perhaps Chambers tried to combine more than one storyline, which perhaps never should have been. 

The ending… well. I turned that final page, after seeing Howard prepare to meet Jean’s mother, after chapters of complication and convoluted plot-development, I was agog, I was aghast! (is Marius in love at last?!). I sat with my mouth wide open, staring in shock at the window, unable to see or think anything but “fuck OFF”. I completely forgot about that article right at the start. Despite the shock factor of the final moment, it irritated me that that is how Chambers got me. From an article at the very start of the book, that you ignore and forget about because it is immediately clear it is irrelevant to the plot. Until the final moment? NO! ANNOYING!

I’m worried the wow factor of the final moment coloured the rest of the okay-ness of the novel. It wasn’t that great, and it irritated me a lot, and it didn’t hook me in, but it did shock me for 2 whole minutes at the very very end. Does that make up for the rest of it? No. 3 stars for me. I enjoyed the subtle significance of the title, it was delicious. Other than that, potentially forgettable.