If you enjoyed Clare Chambers’s last book, Small Pleasures, as much as I did, you’ll be pleased to know her new book, Shy Creatures, is out soon. I’ve always loved this author’s particular way with empathy and humour, so when I found an earlier book by Chambers at a second-hand bookshop, I was delighted, in spite of having read it years before.
Back Trouble, first published in 1994, is about Philip, who is about to turn forty, and his life for the most part seems to have gone to custard. We first catch up with him at an awkward family New Year’s celebration. His insurance broker brother Raymond is over from Canada with a new batch of photos of his children, recounting their successes (the football and the gymnastics), while Philip has never felt less like celebrating. With the failure of his publishing company he is in debt up to his eyeballs and the love of his life having gone home to New Zealand, life couldn’t get any worse, could it?
A cold chip from an overflowing municipal bin sends Philip head over tail and the ensuing back injury leaves him bedridden. There’s nothing to do but to fish out the notebook and pens from under his bed and begin to write the story of his childhood – a New Year’s challenge flung out by Raymond, to be completed in three months – just a thousand words a day – no probs. We are reminded that this is the 1990s and the Internet is in its infancy, although probably a more modern-day Philip wouldn’t be diverted by technology as he’d be out of data anyway – he’s that strapped for cash.
The story alternates between scenes of Philip’s growing up in a working class home in London – baths once a week in a tin tub in the kitchen and gristly stew for dinner – with the year he spends falling in love with Kate. Kate’s a health worker from New Zealand on a limited working visa and a breath of fresh air for Philip and the problems. Each chapter concerns a pivotal point – a bit like a short story – a visit with Kate to Philip’s father’s sheltered flat by the sea; a childhood family holiday by the sea; a wedding; home improvements – ordinary things in themselves, but with significance to the whole.
The kitchen was the first room to be tackled. One of the men from the building site had given Dad and industrial-sized drum of bottle green paint from the batch which his brother, who worked for the Council, had been using to paint the park railings. Cost was Dad’s only criterion in selecting materials. This meant garish rolls of wallpaper from the bargain bucket outside the DIY shop, the top six inches of every roll faded by the sun, and brushes which moulted into the paint. He had an idiosyncratic way of decorating. Being both nervous and impatient he didn’t believe in preparing surfaces, always fearing that something terrible might be lurking beneath a layer of bubbly paper or flaking paint. So instead of stripping paintwork, or even washing it, he would set straight to work, brushing gloss over old gloss, dust, mould and even, in one instance, a dead spider which lay preserved like a Pompeian relic in its shell of green paint.
Philip is such a self-deprecating narrator – he has no illusions about where he’s at as he approaches forty – and his story is warmly humorous as it rattles along to a nicely surprising ending. There are some poignant moments too, particularly in Philip’s childhood, with adults not behaving as they ought to and the weight of knowledge that falls on a young boy growing up. It is easy to blame Philip’s careless yet penny-pinching father, but other adults also turn out to be unreliable or even predatory.
Odd allusions to Great Expectations add an interesting twist. There are a raft of curious characters, quirky, helpful or otherwise, which may be another nod to Dickens, particularly the scene at Philip’s grandmother’s house – the blind matriarch and hoarder of useless furniture, including four unplayable pianos, terrifying in her fierceness; the black-toothed Auntie Florrie smoking her woodbines; Punnet the obese black labrador. It’s like stepping back in time.
For a small book, Clare Chambers packs quite a lot in and it’s hugely entertaining. I know she can always be relied upon for an original and big-hearted read so I am so looking forward to Shy Creatures, released on Amazon at the end of the month. Back Trouble is a four-star read from me.
Judith McKinnon 