I bought Shy Creatures as soon as it came out as an ebook, and unlike many previously purchased novels, it didn’t sit on my bedside table languishing while I was distracted by other books passing by. It beckoned to me and I was soon engrossed – and gosh, what a satisfying read it is.
Shy Creatures is set for the most part in 1964. Helen Hansford is an art therapist at Westbury Park, a facility for mental health patients. She has been having an affair with Gil Rudden, one of the doctors, which is complicated by his wife being a distant cousin of her mother’s. Gil has promised Helen that as soon as his children are old enough to leave home, he will divorce his wife and marry her. Helen accepts the status quo and muddles on with a less than satisfactory home life, a nagging mother, and a job where she doesn’t feel she makes a lot of difference.
For all that, Helen is passionate about her work and the way Westbury Park is run. The gates are always open, and while some therapy involves dulling the patients’s minds with drugs, doctors like Gil have more modern ideas, which is one of the reasons Helen fell for him. An incident at a nearby house leads Helen and Gil to discover a man who has been shut up indoors for at least ten years along with his only relative, a frail and elderly aunt.
William Tapping, now in his late thirties, has been found in a bad way, in a state of undress, a beard down to his stomach and apparently mute. The house is in a state of disrepair, filthy windows letting in no light, the garden a jungle. When social services intervene, William and his aunt are whisked away to Westbury Park. Here Aunt Louisa implores Helen to find a container hidden in the flour bin that no one else should see, but while she’s at the house, Helen also discovers some drawings in William’s room that display the work of a talented artist.
At the discovery of this cache, Helen’s pulse quickened and she felt a tingle of excitement. No one who had passed through the art therapy room during her residency had shown anything approaching this level of talent. Of all the professionals at Westbury Park, she was uniquely placed to help this hidden man emerge from his place of silence. Even Gil did not have her advantage.
The story follows Helen’s efforts to make a connection with William through art as well as her tracking down some old acquaintances – people he knew at school – in an attempt to find out more about him. We have the ups and downs of Helen’s relationships with Gil, as well as her family, particularly with a teenage niece who has a kind of breakdown. Woven into all of this is William’s story, going back steadily in time until we get to the day when his life changed dramatically, putting in place the kind of house arrest his family imposed on him.
It’s a fascinating story with Clare Chambers’s usual wit and brilliantly evoked characterisation – one of the things that puts her books on my must-read list. And it’s a sad story too, as we consider William’s wasted years. The author recreates the era of the sixties – the music and clothes as well as social attitudes to women, to the mentally frail. The limited choices for girls once they leave school – particularly if they want to please their mothers. We also have the war years, and the privations of rationing, the nightly fear of air raids.
If there’s a theme that often appears in books by this Clare Chambers, it is about finding a place in society when you’re not a natural fit. Many of her characters are on the quirky side and with William, we have someone who quite possibly never will find a suitable niche in the world – particularly a world like Britain in 1964. This, plus Helen’s relationship woes pulls you through the story, along with the eventual revelation of a terrible secret. It’s another brilliant read from Clare Chambers – I can’t recommend it enough – a five-star read from me.
Judith McKinnon 