Small Pleasures
Fiction
Custom House
October 5, 2021
Hardcover
288
Free from publisher
1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape.
That all changes when a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean seizes onto the bizarre story and sets out to discover whether Gretchen is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys, including Gretchen’s gentle and thoughtful husband Howard, who mostly believes his wife, and their quirky and charming daughter Margaret, who becomes a sort of surrogate child for Jean. Gretchen, too, becomes a much-needed friend in an otherwise empty social life.
Jean cannot bring herself to discard what seems like her one chance at happiness, even as the story that she is researching starts to send dark ripples across all their lives…with unimaginable consequences.
My review:
This book first caught my eye when it was longlisted for the Women's Prize for fiction. It was already published in the UK when the list came out (that is where the prize originates, although it includes global representation). It seemed to take forever for it to get published here in the States, but I was patient, and am glad it never dropped off my radar. I really liked this one. It had a an interesting plot point, a woman writes to a newspaper claiming to have had a virgin birth. I was a bit nervous that it was going to have lots of religious connotations, but thankfully that was not the case. I really enjoyed the characters in this book. Jean is the newspaper writer tasked with researching and writing the story of the virgin birth, and she was really well crafted. The daughter in question was just delightful, and I immediately fell in love with her precociousness. While I wasn't a huge fan of the romance that was included as a sub plot, it was tolerable, and led to the climactic ending that definitely had me shedding a tear or two! Since this book took place in 1957, I got some glimpses of life at that time (albeit in London). This was the year before I was born, so I was intrigued with that aspect. I thought the writing was superb, and the book was just the right length and pace. As I've mentioned, the ending, while emotional, was well constructed. Would I have liked an afterword to check up on how the characters lives progressed? I would, but I honestly think it would have made the ending no where near as impactful.
A quiet well written novel, with memorable characters, an interesting plot, and a bittersweet end. I'm excited to read more from this author.
