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Summary

From the highly-acclaimed author of SMALL PLEASURES - longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021

On the brink of forty, newly single with a failed business, Philip thought he'd reached an all-time low.

It only needed a discarded chip on a South London street to lay him literally flat. So, bedbound and bored, Philip naturally starts to write the story of his life.

But between the mundane catalogue of seaside holidays and bodged DIY, broken relationships and unspoken truths, more surprises are revealed, both comic and touching, than Philip or his family ever bargained for. Even, perhaps, a happy ending...

Praise for Clare Chambers:

'Smart, astute, and very funny' Daily Mail

'Gorgeous... If you're looking for something escapist and bittersweet, I could not recommend more' Pandora Sykes on SMALL PLEASURES

'Chambers' eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity' Guardian

'A funny and moving story with a great deal of style' Daily Express

Reviews

A funny and moving story with a great deal of style
Sunday Telegraph

About the author

Clare Chambers

Clare Chambers was born in south east London in 1966. Her first novel, Uncertain Terms, was published when she was 25. She has since written nine further novels, including Learning to Swim (Century 1998) which won the Romantic Novelists' Association best novel award 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 an 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).

Small Pleasures (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020) was her first novel in a decade and became a word-of-mouth hit. It was selected for BBC2 Between the Covers, and was chosen as a book of the year by The Times, the Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, and Spectator among others. It went on to win Pageturner of the Year at the British Book Awards and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Her latest novel is Shy Creatures (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2024).

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