Shy Creatures

From the author of bestselling sensation Small Pleasures comes an extraordinary story of love, family and the joy of freedom.

It all started the weekend the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park . . .

Croydon, 1964. Art therapist Helen Hansford is working in a psychiatric hospital, where she has been having passionate but precarious affair with her married colleague, the charismatic Dr. Gil Rudden.

Helen's structured life is upended when William Tapping - a silent, thirty-seven-year-old man with a beard down to his waist - arrives at the hospital. As Helen helps William express himself through art, she becomes increasingly entangled in his mysterious past.

Inspired by a true story, Shy Creatures is a life-affirming exploration of loneliness, love and the quiet forces that shape our lives, reminding us that freedom can come in unexpected forms.

''Reading a Clare Chambers novel can feel like entering a modest bungalow and finding yourself in a cathedral'' SUNDAY TIMES

''A warm, multilayered mystery with all the charms of Small Pleasures'' i PAPER

''A lively, funny, forgiving novel'' PATRICK GALE