Small Pleasures

Clare Chambers

W&N £14.99

It’s 1957 and Jean Swinney, a spinster journalist in her late 30s, has just been assigned a bizarre feature that will thoroughly upturn her quiet, parsimonious life. Its focus is Gretchen Tilbury, a Swiss-born housewife who claims that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. As Jean investigates, she finds herself swept up into the Tilburys’ deceptively harmonious orbit. An irresistible novel – wry, perceptive and quietly devastating.