Clare Chambers is an acclaimed author of nine novels, including Learning to Swim, winner of the Romantic Novelists’ Association award, and In a Good Light, longlisted for the Whitbread best novel prize. She began her career at André Deutsch as a secretary and later became an editor, an experience that inspired her novel The Editor’s Wife. Her recent works include Small Pleasures (2020) and the forthcoming Shy Creatures. Clare lives in southeast London with her husband .

Tell us about your recent book, Shy Creatures.

Shy Creatures is set in a large progressive 1960s psychiatric hospital in the suburbs of London and it concerns the relationship between an art therapist called Helen and a non-verbal patient called William who was discovered living in a semi-feral state, as a recluse or a prisoner, with his elderly aunt, unknown to the outside world for over twenty years. When it emerges that he is a gifted artist, Helen comes to see his salvation as something of a personal project. In the process her own private and professional life become somewhat compromised with nearly disastrous consequences.

We are in the year 1964 – an interesting time for psychiatry and society. Change is all around – the old pieties are being swept away by youth culture, pop music, the pill, the end of national service. Times are a-changing, but for my characters, just too old to benefit, looking on at this brave new world with some alarm, the sixties are definitely not swinging.

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What was the inspiration behind your most recent book? How do you find those sparks of creativity when you’re starting something new?

The character of William was based on a true story that I came across in a newspaper archive while I was researching Small Pleasures. A man called Harry Tucker was discovered in 1952 living in a house in Bristol with his Aunt, in a squalid state, under the radar of neighbours and the authorities. They were removed to a psychiatric hospital and seemed to be making good progress. Sadly, a newspaper report a year later recorded his death by drowning in a nearby river. I became preoccupied by his sad fate and decided to write him a past and a more hopeful future.

As a writer who explores themes like family, relationships, and societal norms, do you find yourself drawing on personal experiences, or do you delve into extensive research?

Where I am writing about areas beyond my expertise and experience, like 1960s psychiatric hospitals for example, I do extensive research. This is no chore – it is my interest in the subject that drives my determination to write about it. I do lots of background reading, from books, academic journals, contemporary diaries, newspaper archives, most of which never finds its way into the books, but is there underneath in support, like the bottom 5/6 of an iceberg. For the suburban settings, the domestic sphere and matters of the heart and those feelings and experiences which are unchanging and universal – I draw on my own life and the histories of my family and friends.

Your novel Small Pleasures brought you to a new level of recognition. Could you share a bit about what your journey to publication looked like?

Small Pleasures was my 9th novel and came after a decade of being unpublished. I had written six books for adults and two for teenagers since my early twenties, but although enthusiastically received by their few readers, none had sold in any quantity and were now mostly unavailable. The book before Small Pleasures took me four years to write and was turned down by my publisher which led to a year or so of despondency and wound-licking before I regathered my confidence in writing again. With the encouragement of a new agent, I revisited an old idea that I had been incubating since 2001 about a woman claiming to be a Virgin Mother. Based on a true story, and set in the 1950s, this was a new departure for me and it felt like the last throw of the dice, career-wise. I thought as a 50+ woman with a poor track record of sales, I would never be published again. I was surprised and delighted to find the industry more forgiving than I had feared, and in 2019 three UK publishers offered for the novel.

Many new authors face the myth of the “overnight success.” Can you talk about your experience with that concept and what it was like navigating the ups and downs of your writing career?

It is amusing to hear one’s labours of over 30 years described as an overnight success. Small Pleasures took off gently, not like a rocket. It was bought for a modest sum and did not make the bestseller lists as a hardback, but it was warmly reviewed in all the important places and there was some sympathy for my re-emergence from literary obscurity. And gradually it began to sell and be discussed and recommended on social media, and bought by foreign publishers, and word-of-mouth did what it can do only in the internet age, and at last I had a prize-winning book on my hands. I feel very lucky that success has come closer to the end than the beginning of my career, when I can enjoy it without worrying whether it will last.

From your experience, what do you think the publishing world gets wrong about the concept of an “overnight success”? How does this narrative affect new writers?

I think the emphasis placed on debuts to be the next big thing puts unfair pressure on them and is by any measure bizarre. In what other profession is inexperience regarded as such a huge positive? No one says ‘Yay, I’ve got this debut surgeon fresh out of college about to open up my cranium!’ Writers and artists of all kinds have to be given time to practise and hone their craft and should, ideally, improve over time.
What role has persistence played in your writing career? Can you share a time when you were close to giving up but chose to keep going?

After the failure of my four-year project I was very low indeed. Four years is a long time to waste without earning any money or achieving any creative fulfilment. I seriously wondered whether it was time to accept that I was an ex-writer. For at least a year I couldn’t even read a book, much less write one. My husband and my new agent were more stubborn than me and more or less insisted that I persist. This time I made sure I had the novel fully researched, plotted and planned before I started, so that I would never be faced with that dark thicket of uncertainty that it is easy to blunder into half way through the writing of a book.

Your work often portrays the quiet complexities of life. How do you bring tension and intrigue into those everyday moments without relying on big dramatic events?

‘Ordinary’ lives are full of incident, disappointment, regret. The micro-humiliations of everyday life can be quite confounding for the people experiencing them. As long as you walk alongside your characters and don’t look down on them, their emotional hurdles are every bit as riveting as more ostentatious dramas.
Are there any particular authors or books that have deeply influenced your writing? What are you currently reading that inspires you?

Great writing of any genre or flavour inspires me. I like to move between the vast landscapes and conflicts of westerns like Lonesome Dove and the intimate smalltown lives of Elizabeth Strout. Both have the same capacity to take me out of myself and show me something new.  I admire dexterity in plotting, because it is so hard to do. For me, writing is all about the rhythm of every sentence. It should have a light bounce, like a table tennis ball. It’s an effect most writers achieve without even thinking about it. Then occasionally you read something that lands on the ear like a fridge falling down a flight of stairs.

Finally, what’s next for you? Can you share any details about upcoming projects or ideas you’re excited to explore?

I don’t have any firm or even infirm ideas for my next novel yet. I think there is something unseemly about chasing after inspiration. As with an old-fashioned courtship, I would really rather it made the first move.