Quiet Secrets and Hidden Lives Shine in a Story of Redemption and Connection

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers

"Shy Creatures shimmers, glows and charms as its secrets, lies and mysteries are deftly revealed."

Shy Creatures is one of those rarities in literary fiction, a quiet celebration of the complex human interactions that form lasting genuine friendships and heartfelt relationships that are retained in golden memories. Award-winning British novelist Clare Chambers has written nine novels including Learning to Swim which won the 1999 Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

A Life Unfolds in 1960s Suburbia

Her current novel takes place chiefly in the London suburb of Croydon in 1964 with flashbacks to World War II as the early life of secondary character William Tapping is explored. The protagonist is Helen Hanford, an attractive, intelligent unmarried thirty-something art therapist at the Westbury Park Psychiatric Hospital. Her conventional parents are disappointed she has chosen what they regard as a thankless career in a “mental asylum” over marriage and a family. Her disciplined older sister June with her rigid style of fashion being helmet hair and twinsets (matching cardigans over same color shells) seems a generation older than the actual few years separating their ages. June has a charmless marriage to Clive and frequently battles with their shy, yet tentatively rebellious teenage daughter Lorraine.

Given the dismal examples of her sibling and parent’s marriages, it’s a wonder Helen didn’t permanently swear off relationships.  Perhaps this would have been best as she is embroiled in a demoralizing love affair with Dr. Gil Rudden whose wife Kathleen is her distant cousin. In order to conceal their intimacy, Helen was inveigled to give up her shared flat arrangement with pleasant roommates and moved into a one-bedroom flat partially subsidized by Gil as she couldn’t otherwise afford the rent.   

A Shocking Discovery

Westbury Park is a sterling example of mid-20th century breakthroughs made in British psychiatric hospitals with a welcome move from the barbaric practices of Bethlem Royal Hospital, often called Bedlam, to more enlightened treatment methods. Various drug therapies were introduced along with individualized patient counseling and socializing classes in arts and crafts. Dr. Rudden is a caring psychiatrist who has made good progress with several of the patients, some of whom are voluntary day patients while others are long-term residents. They are a mix of mild to severely mentally ill patients and some addicts.

The hospital received a distress call summoning psychiatric assistance from neighbors to a nearby run-down Victorian-era home. Police were shocked to discover two residents there; a frail elderly woman in advanced stages of dementia and a 37-year-old mute man with hair and beard down to his waist clad in ill-fitting old-fashioned clothing, blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight of the spring afternoon.

His aunt died not long after she arrived at the hospital but not before she managed to persuade Helen to go to the house and fetch her hidden box of valuables. It transpired no one had seen her nephew William in over two decades; the neighbors were unaware of his existence and the reason for his seclusion remained a total mystery.

An Artistic Talent and a Mystery Unraveled

Helen is drawn to this curious man who quickly displays a tremendous artistic talent for drawing and painting. It becomes clear he is sane but socially illiterate and is comfortable living in Westbury Park, delighted to shed the unkempt hair and beard, receive new clothing, a comfortable bed and nourishing food. Having never seen television, he becomes quite obsessed with it. “Hidden man” becomes Helen’s personal challenge; a puzzle to work out. With permission and access to the aunt’s home, she retrieved the precious box concealed in a weevily flour bin which contained a handful of letters addressed to “William Tapping” that he had never received.

Helen gradually works out that William had been a boarding school student until he was 15 but something odd had occurred at the school that frightened his family into concealing his existence. As she gradually uncovers vital connections from his schoolboy days and as old friendships emerge from the shadowy past, Helen’s own restricted life begins to expand.

She finally realistically re-evaluates her passive, unsatisfactory relationship in which she has played a distant second fiddle with her lover frequently cancelling dinners and trysts at the last minute due to “family matters”. Gil had made it clear he would not divorce his wife until their two young children were 18 or older and out of the house. However, it jolted her out of complacency to learn from her own mother chatting about Cousin Kathleen (Gil’s wife) they were soon to have a third child. 

A Soul-Satisfying Novel

This reviewer will not reveal additional details that might spoil the delight of readers who will savor this life-affirming, ultimately joy-filled and soul-satisfying novel. Clare Chambers is a gifted wordsmith whose Shy Creatures shimmers, glows and charms as its secrets, lies and mysteries are deftly revealed. This exceptional novel is perfect for book clubs. 

Fans of writers of character-driven books such as Helen Simonson, Frederik Backman, Jacqueline Winspear, Sir Alexander McCall Smith, Monica Wood, and many more might very well embrace this novel with evangelistic fervor.