Small Pleasures

One of Stylist’s books of the summer’Perfect’India Knight ‘A very fine book… It’s witty and sharp and reads like something by Barbara Pym or Anita Brookner, without ever feeling like a pastiche’David Nicholls’A perfect, funny, insightful, novel about women, friendship, and ageing. I loved it’Nina Stibbe ‘Remarkable… Small Pleasures is no small pleasure’The Times’Chambers’ eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity… There is compassion and quiet humour to be found in this tale of postwar Britain’ Guardian ‘An irresistible novel – wry, perceptive and quietly devastating’Mail on Sunday ‘Will draw you in from the first page and keep you gripped until the very end’Ruth Hogan, author of The Keeper of Lost Things1957, south-east suburbs of London. Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper, disappointed in love and – on the brink of forty – living a limited existence with her truculent mother.When a young Swiss woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. But the more she investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys: Gretchen herself, her husband Howard – with his dry wit and gentle disposition – and her charming daughter Margaret. But they are the subject of the story Jean is researching for the newspaper, a story that increasingly seems to be causing dark ripples across all their lives. And yet Jean cannot bring herself to discard the chance of finally having a taste of happiness.But there will be a price to pay – and it will be unbearable.]]>