- Mail on Sunday (UK) Indeed, it is here where her highly accessible prose and eminently navigable narrative technique, while perhaps a touch too risk-averse and clean-cut for some, serve her well vis-a-vis the books raison dtre. The less the audience notices HOW things were shot, the better. Writing Historical fiction comes with a whole layer of additional issues on top of the usual storytelling conundrums. Both an absorbing mystery and a tender love story - and the ending is devastating. ISBN-13: 978-1474613880. In the best tradition of Tessa Hadley, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ann Patchett - an astonishing, keenly observed period piece about an ordinary British woman in the 1950s whose dutiful life takes a sudden turn into a pitched battle between propriety and unexpected passion. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Small Pleasures By: Clare Chambers Narrated by: Karen Cass Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins 4.1 (14 ratings) Try for $0.00 1 title per month from Audible's entire catalog of best sellers, and new releases. If you admire Tessa Hadley or Anne Tyler (and there are shades of . Another example is the ending of chapter 28, after Jean has spend the night with Howard: When she tried to visualize the future any more than a few days ahead there was no certainty, only fog. [ we have no idea what the next chapter will be. And she loves their daughter, and loves being her special auntie.. At work? Its just there all the time. Small Pleasures: Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 A Paperback edition by Clare Chambers (29 Apr 2021) You save 8% off RRP! Its essentially a Womens Fiction (in that the plot is focused on the characters emotional journey) with a romantic thread, all wrapped up in a Literary package; and we know from experience, as most of us write fiction that fits this bill, how hard it is to keep something this quiet suspenseful and tense at the same time. "An irresistible novelwry, perceptive and quietly devastating." There is compassion and quiet humour to be found in this tale of a putative virgin birth in postwar Britain. The notion of someone calling the office and claiming a virgin birth really isnt that far fetched, and so, I was excited to see how this novel panned out. D. W. White is a graduate of the M.F.A. Readers' questions about Small Pleasures. Learn how your comment data is processed. Heres what Clare Chambers did to make Jean feel so active: First, when she first introduces Jean to us, Jean is the sole woman-reporter working in a male-dominated field. The descriptions of the protagonist smoking over the sink, or doing her raking in the garden, or curling her mothers hair dont only root you in the time-frame, but in the mind-frame of that era as well. This is all vague and out of context and the reader is holding her breath and waiting for the scene to really. In the mid 50s, scientists began to give serious consideration to the possibility of single-sex reproduction. Small Pleasures was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021, which is probably why so many people are longing to read it. Jean is assigned to write a feature about Gretchen, a Swiss woman who claims her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Beneath her quiet and tactful demeanor is a true drive for journalistic truth, and a determination to remain open to the facts, and a willingness to treat honestly everyone that serves her well in her journey. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys, including Gretchen's gentle and thoughtful husband Howard, who mostly believes his wife, and their quirky and charming daughter Margaret, who becomes a sort of surrogate child for Jean.
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