The Editor's Wife

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Summary

'So charming' Marian Keyes

From the highly-acclaimed author of SMALL PLEASURES - winner of the 2022 British Book Awards Page-Turner

When aspiring novelist Christopher Flinders drops out of university to write his masterpiece (in between shifts as a fish delivery man and builder's mate), his family is sceptical.

But when he is taken up by the London editor Owen Goddard and his charming wife Diana it seems success is just around the corner. Christopher's life has so far been rather short of charm - growing up in an unlovely suburb, with unambitious parents and a semi-vagrant brother - and he is captivated by his generous and cultured mentors.

However, on the brink of realising his dream, Christopher makes a desperate misjudgement which results in disaster for all involved. Shattered, he withdraws from London and buries himself in rural Yorkshire, embracing a career and a private life marked by mediocrity.

Twenty years on, a young academic researching into Owen Goddard seeks him out, and Christopher is forced to exhume his past, setting him on a path to a life-changing discovery.

Praise for Clare Chambers:

'Thoroughly enjoyable and very clever' Sunday Express

'Effortless to read, but every sentence lingers in the mind' Lissa Evans on Small Pleasures

'Beautifully observed and achingly funny' Woman & Home

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

'Reminds us of the rare pleasure that an intelligent tale with a happy ending brings' The Sunday Times

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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