From the highly-acclaimed author of SMALL PLEASURES - longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021

On the brink of forty, newly single with a failed business, Philip thought he'd reached an all-time low.

It only needed a discarded chip on a South London street to lay him literally flat. So, bedbound and bored, Philip naturally starts to write the story of his life.

But between the mundane catalogue of seaside holidays and bodged DIY, broken relationships and unspoken truths, more surprises are revealed, both comic and touching, than Philip or his family ever bargained for. Even, perhaps, a happy ending...

Praise for Clare Chambers:

'Smart, astute, and very funny' Daily Mail

'Gorgeous... If you're looking for something escapist and bittersweet, I could not recommend more' Pandora Sykes on SMALL PLEASURES

'Chambers' eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity' Guardian

'A funny and moving story with a great deal of style' Daily Express

'A funny and moving story with a great deal of style' Sunday Telegraph

About the Author

Clare Chambers was born in south east London in 1966. She studied English at Oxford and spent the year after graduating in New Zealand, where she wrote her first novel, Uncertain Terms, published when she was 25. She has since written eight further novels, including Learning to Swim (Century 1998) which won the Romantic Novelists' Association best novel award and was adapted as a Radio 4 play, and In a Good Light (Century 2004) which was longlisted for the Whitbread best novel prize.

Clare began her career as a secretary at the publisher Andre Deutsch, when Diana Athill was still at the helm. They not only published her first novel, but made her type her own contract. In due course she went on to become a fiction and non-fiction editor there herself, until leaving to raise a family and concentrate on her own writing. Some of the experiences of working for an eccentric, independent publisher in the pre-digital era found their way into her novel The Editor's Wife (Century, 2007). When her three children were teenagers, inspired by their reading habits, she produced two YA novels, Bright Girls (HarperCollins 2009) and Burning Secrets (HarperCollins 2011).

Her most recent novel is Small Pleasures (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020).

She takes up a post as Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Kent in September 2020.

Reviews
A funny and moving story with a great deal of style * Sunday Telegraph *
A funny book which slips in some acute and painful obervations on the side * The Times *
A great read * Time Out *



Book Information
ISBN 9780099414568
Author Clare Chambers
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Arrow Books Ltd
Publisher Cornerstone
Weight(grams) 159g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 14mm