Shy Creatures (Clare Chambers)

Clare Chambers
Shy Creatures

A strange and beautiful novel. The topics cover love, loss and shame. Loss covering actual loss and lost opportunities or not having other lives. There are unexpected twists in the story and in some ways it's a bit of a whodunit (or didn't) mystery. One of the character's earlier lives is told in reverse so that the various threads come together towards the end. The "present day" setting, so to speak, is in the mid 60s and the story goes back to the war years and beyond. It's interesting to set it then as society has obviously changed including mental health management as the novel is centred around an institute helping, or at least "treating", those who are not deemed "normal" by "society". Whatever that means and indeed that is partly covered in the novel. The cultural references of the mid 60s are interesting especially for those who lived through them - or in my case were conscious of the tail end of those changes going into the 70s. A thoroughly enjoyable read written with care and compassion.