Book Club Recap: Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

Small Pleasures is one of those books that slowly, almost imperceptibly finds its way into your heart—and once it settles there, it’s there to stay.

Moreover, it’s storytelling at its best. From themes, characterization, plotting, narrative drive, micro-tension… so many things in this book are—just stellar.

• Narrative drive

Narrative drive (more on what narrative drive is and how to create it, here) in this book is created in a two-fold (if not in three-fold) way.

First, the author opens the book with a sort of a prologue—a newspaper article about a terrible train accident that happened on December 6, 1957. The accident left more than 80 people killed, and hundreds more injured.

Then, the opening chapter is set in June, 1957, six months prior to the said accident.

Since the readers always assume nothing in the book is random, they know that this accident will affect the story one way or another. So this article touches on both poles of narrative drive; at first, while we haven’t yet met the characters, it creates curiosity (how will that wreck change the characters’ lives? Which one of them is going to get killed or injured in it? Will it affect the plot in some other way?). But further you go into the book, as you get to know each character, as you get invested in their lives—as you start caring for them, it also ignites concern (”I hope it’s not Jean who gets killed! Not now, when she finally has someone who loves her! Oh, but I hope it’s not Margaret either, or Gretchen!”)

The other thread that creates narrative drive is the virgin birth story.

Now, first of all, if someone had told me before I read this book, that there could be any curiosity about a woman who claims to have had a virgin birth, I would have laughed in their face (which only reminds me how skeptical we’ve become, how wonder-less and cynical; this is another thing this book touches on, as it is a meditation on decent, nice people), but the author makes a fantastic case.

She put the supposed virgin mother (Gretchen) in an environment where she couldn’t possibly get pregnant by a man, and then her story is being corroborated time after time by a series of serology tests and witness testimonies—on top of Gretchen’s impeccable character and persuasiveness (because, Gretchen firmly believes in her virgin birth story; in other words, we can see Gretchen is not lying, and later on we learn she really didn’t lie; she truly believed Margaret was born without a man being involved in her conception).

And yet, there are small kernels of doubt that niggle at Jean as she investigates, but they are small and inconsequential enough (early on in the book) to make it easier to buy into the whole virgin-birth theory.

So, in the first few pages, you already have a dozen questions that keep you turning the page: What does the train wreck have to do with these characters, how will it affect their lives? What’s the deal with this virgin birth, is it true or false? What will happen if Gretchen proves her point, and what if she is disproved?

Further on as we read, as we started caring for the characters more—and as we saw glimpses of their emerging relationships, the questions and concerns slowly changed to the matters of the heart. We were all deeply invested in wishing Jean and Howard would get together and find happiness, but without wanting anything bad to happen to Gretchen, or Margaret.

There were so many obstacles all around, too, which brings us to another thing fabulously done in this book.

• Micro-tension

When a book is a finished product—especially when it’s done extremely well, like this one—it’s hard to reverse-cycle and see all the things that have made it that good (all the authorial decisions the author made to create an effective narrative drive, suspense, tension, to flesh out characters, or capture an essence of an era). These are all vital to making a book great, but when the book is finished, all these moving parts are invisible to the reader (as they should be), as the reader is fully engrossed in the story.

It’s like in movies. In the end, all that matters is that seamless viewing experience. The less the audience notices HOW things were shot, the better.

This book is filled with authorial decisions that are seamless on the page, but have made a major difference for the reader.

For instance, this could have been a pretty quiet book. It’s essentially a Women’s Fiction (in that the plot is focused on the character’s emotional journey) with a romantic thread, all wrapped up in a Literary package; and we know from experience, as most of us write fiction that fits this bill, how hard it is to keep something this quiet suspenseful and tense at the same time.

There are no bombs going of. No explosions or near-death experiences to jolt the reader and elicit strong emotional reactions, and yet we still couldn’t put this book down (most of us, anyway). So how did Clare Chambers do it?

While the book deals with rather quiet events, the author made sure to extract maximum tension in any given scene. Here are some examples:

• Jean’s mother is a huge source of micro-tension. Jean can’t just go out and about as she pleases. If she wants to have a few hours to herself, she has to go through an ordeal of a/getting someone to hang out with her nihilistic mother, and b/get her mother to accept that person’s company. Which, we learn, is no small feat.

• When writers are writing a love triangle, especially when the protagonist is in the ‘home-wrecking’ position, they will often make the wife look bad. It makes it easier for the reader to stop moralizing and accept and invest in the affair (something that they wouldn’t usually lean toward). But Jean likes Gretchen almost as much as she likes her husband Howard. And she loves their daughter, and loves being her ‘special auntie.’

  Even when she and Howard consume their relationship, and when she learns that Howard and Gretchen only functioned as friends, a part of Jean is still invested in putting them back together, even if it’s at the expense of her happiness.

• The virgin birth story adds additional layer of tension all around. Jean has her responsibilities to the newspaper she works for, the money and resources they’d spent on investigating the story; and then she has a moral duty to Margaret and Gretchen and even Howard; and these are not always aligned. This is a source of much tension in the book.

In each scene, there are at least two of these vector lines butting heads: Jean wants to spend the day with the Tilburies but feels guilty for leaving her mother alone. She also feels resentful that she has to feel guilty for leaving her mother alone; but she also feels guilty because the real reason why she wants to visit the Tilburies isn’t to spend a nice afternoon having tea, or getting her dress fitted, but because she wants to be close to Howard… The reader picks up on all these different currents pulling Jean in every which way, and it makes for compelling reading experience.

• Writing a passive protagonist

When I first mentioned Jean being a passive protagonist in our book club meeting, I was met with some resistance from our members. In all honesty, Jean didn’t feel passive at all.

But Jean is, actually, the prototype of a passive protagonist. She is in a bad situation; nearing forty, a ‘spinster’ living with her mother. Her life is reduced to work, and running home to prepare a dinner for her mother. Her time at home isn’t her own—it’s her mother’s. Her mother has a strict schedule (bath times, hair-do times, etc…) and makes sure Jean follows it to a T. She uses guilt-trips and emotional blackmails to get her way, and as the final touch of her passiveness, Jean is aware of her mother’s manipulative ways but does nothing to break free from them.

In other words, when the book opens, Jean is done-in. She doesn’t expect anything from life. She’s given up on everything that makes life worthwhile, and doesn’t do anything to claw herself out of that situation.

Recently, there have been two fantastic articles on Writer Unboxed touching on the issue of passive protagonists (here, and here), where the authors discussed why we absolutely need passive protagonists, and how not to turn our passive protagonists into these woe-is-me, agency-crippled creatures.

Here’s what Clare Chambers did to make Jean feel so active:

• First, when she first introduces Jean to us, Jean is the sole woman-reporter working in a male-dominated field. This throws you way off course, as she is the feminist prototype, a career woman in the era when women, as a rule, had no careers.

• She’s smart and efficient where her work is concerned. This makes her seem like she has agency. But when you really look at it, she only has agency over things that don’t matter much.

• She is definitely dominated by her mother, but instead on focusing on feeling sorry for herself, she is focusing on small acts of rebellion against her mother; having a cigarette late at night, stealing a minute or two for herself right under her mother’s nose…

• Jean’s internal monologue is not focused on woes. Her circumstances tell us she is subdued and passive; but she doesn’t. I think this is the most common mistake I see where writing passive characters is concerned: writers think they need to show us their lack of agency by making them feel sorry for themselves; by explaining to the reader exactly how and why they’re subdued. But that only makes the reader frustrated, because, if you’re aware something’s wrong with your life, why don’t you just change it? So the more the character is telling us how mistreated and trampled-on they are, the more resistance toward them we feel.

  If you really want to write a passive protagonist that works, have their circumstances speak for them—but inside their internal monologue, show us how and why they are sticking it out.

• Characterization

Apart from being a perfect passive protagonist (that didn’t feel passive at all), Jean was, more than anything, REAL. When we discussed what made her feel so real to us, we came to the conclusion that her interiority, conscious and subconscious alike, was always 100% aligned with who Jean was.

Everyone who’s ever done something out of nothing, knows how hard it is. Making a real-life person (giving birth) is terribly hard, but at least the nature takes care of most things. In other words, when a woman has a baby, at least she doesn’t have to decide on their personality traits, their decision-making process, how they’ll handle emotions…

Writing someone out of nothing and making them feel more than a cardboard character—while not telling, bogging the story down with info-dumps, being careful of your word-count, and all other things we need to keep track of—is excruciatingly difficult.

So kudos to the author, because Jean has emerged under her pen a fully fleshed-out, real person. Why? Because her subconscious and conscious are perfectly aligned.

In words of literary agent, Cecilia Lyra, (The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Podcast, Episode How to Write a Novel in Half the Time): “We feel before we think. Feeling is unconscious. This is actually something that all writers should think about. Your protagonist’s unconscious should be on the page—not just their conscious awareness, not just the stuff they’re seeing—but the stuff they’re not even realizing they’re actually experiencing.”

In Jean, we can always sense this consistent underlying current that not even she is aware of, running strong under the surface of her conscious mind. We don’t only see plot events, and what Jean thinks about them and how she responds to them: we understand exactly WHY she responds to them the way she does, because we know who she is. This goes way beyond being let in on someone’s internal monologue. As the story progresses, we become so in tune with who Jean is as a person that we know how she perceives the world and how she will handle whatever life throws her way. There’s a sense of familiarity that stems from that, it both endears her to us, and makes her feel extremely real.

• Historical Fiction at its best

Writing Historical fiction comes with a whole layer of additional issues on top of the usual storytelling conundrums. There’s a whole world-building overlay to create and maintain. You want your reader to feel like they’re immersed in the time period where you set your book, and this can be quite a difficult feat even when you've actually lived in that time period. The way we word things changes, the way we live has sped up. We can’t always recall little, everyday things that had once made our day-to-day lives. On top of this, you must be careful not to fall into the trap of info-dumping or telling. The historical setting needs to be engrained into your storytelling, not just sprinkled here and there.

This is what Clare Chamber does flawlessly. You are in 1957 London suburb from the time you hit first page to the time she breaks your heart with the last word.

In fact, she does this so naturally, so seamlessly, that you could’ve sworn that this book was actually written in 1957. There’s no trace of modern times in any of her words. Furthermore, she evokes that era without you even thinking about it. It’s just there all the time.

So how did she do it?

• Wording

Granted, British English is conducive to sounding historic even when it’s contemporary. But still, Chambers does a fantastic job of keeping in tune with how people talked in 1957.

Here’s a really simple example—a snippet of a conversation.

“Have you ever been to Simpson’s on Strand?” Margaret asked.

“No, I never have.”

A contemporary writer would have written “No, I haven’t,” instead of “No, I never have.” This is a small clue that the writer uses to hint at the era. As a reader, you’re not exactly paying attention to this; your brain isn’t saying hey, look, this signals that we’re in 1957, but it tracks it just the same.

• Time appropriate stage-setting

The author paid attention to settings, clothes, and other details that added to the feeling of being in mid-20th century.

There were scarfs tied under the chin when one drove a bicycle; full-circle skirts bunched around the waist; hats and gloves, which were all very time-evocative, but the author doubled down on the historical element even more.

For example, I could see the editorial meetings like I was watching one of those black-and-white movies, with rowdy, loud men smoking cigars, and Jean amongst them, also smoking and being aware she’s the only woman there, even though they consider her ‘one of the chaps.’

The stores (Howard’s in particular) and pastry shops also had a time-stamp on them. Not just in descriptions, but in the way people worked (much more mindfully and slowly than they do now). This allows your brain to fill in the things that the author might not have mentioned: the attire of the costumers, the hats they’re wearing… thus, further adding to this omnipresent historical overlay.

• Pacing

Both the way the author worded things and how she painted the setting would’ve made for a strong historical setting, but one more detail really sealed the deal. The pacing was time-appropriate.

You know how modern movies are filled with action and heightened emotions, whereas old movies are much slower, and much more subtle when it comes to huge turning points? This is what the author did—she slowed down the pace just enough to keep you moving while still evoking the 1950s. The descriptions of the protagonist smoking over the sink, or doing her raking in the garden, or curling her mother’s hair don’t only root you in the time-frame, but in the mind-frame of that era as well.

• Grounding the reader in time and space when opening a scene

An interesting point of discussion emerged when we discussed how the author opened some scenes and moved the story forward. The story advanced in unexpected ways, in that when you turned the page, you couldn’t really be sure what the next scene would be.

Many of our members have had editors press on them with demands that they ‘ground the reader in time and space when they open the scene.’ I, myself, have been on both the receiving and giving end of this suggestion. So why did it work for this author and not for so many of us?

• Grounding the reader in space and time doesn’t mean that the story must have an expected trajectory. For instance, when one chapter of Small Pleasures ends, you don’t know what’s going to happen next, in the sense that you don’t know if it’s going to be a scene with Jean and Howard, Jean and her mother, at Jean’s work, at the hospital where tests are being run… and this is fine, as this is the type of suspense that makes you want to turn the page.

• But when you do actually open the scene, you do need to fill in reader as soon as possible on when and where they are. And Chambers did this. For example, chapter 22 ends with:

  “Jean felt a certain reluctance to pursue the fourth member of this curious fellowship but knew that she must. It was pure squeamishness—a fear of confronting serious illness—that made her hesitate and while she delayed, something else happened that threw all other plans into confusion.”

  At this point, you have NO idea where the next chapter will open. It may be at work, or in the hospital, or somewhere entirely else. But chapter 23 begins with:

  “‘There’s that man again.’

  Jean’s mother' was standing at the front-room window (…).

  Within two lines, you know where you are (at Jean’s home) and what’s going on (Howard’s come over).

  Another example is the ending of chapter 28, after Jean has spend the night with Howard: “When she tried to visualize the future any more than a few days ahead there was no certainty, only fog.” [ we have no idea what the next chapter will be. In the hospital with mother? With Gretchen? At work? With Howard?]

  And then opening of chapter 29: “The crooked tines of the rake made a tinny rattle as they combed the wet grass, drawing leaves into a copper mound. Jean, defended against autumn weather by wellingtons and windcheater over her oldest outdoor clothes, was spending her Saturday out in the front garden, catching up with neglected chores.” [So we know, within this paragraph it’s the next Saturday and we’re in Jean’s garden.]

  UNEXPECTED doesn’t mean VAGUE. Her openings are unexpected in terms of not knowing before we turn the page, where she was taking us, and this is welcome as it cultivates suspense and makes us want to turn the page. But as soon as we hit the new chapter, she fills us in on where and when we are right away.

  This is very different to what usually happens when editors make the ‘ground us’ remark, which is writing something to the effect of: “Happiness was always an elusive concept for Jean. Did it require anything outside of her? Or was cultivating small pleasures enough? There were days when Jean felt perfectly contented with her life. And then, there were days when she questioned the very core of her existence. Why even exist if you’re not making a difference? And most days she felt she didn’t. Even if her mother needed her or if the Echo lost their only female reporter.” I apologize for trying my hand at this, but hopefully it goes to show how ungrounded this passage is. It doesn’t tell us where Jean is, or what triggered these thoughts. This is all vague and out of context and the reader is holding her breath and waiting for the scene to really.

• Foreshadowing

Just to be horribly nitpicky, because the members of the Writers’ Book Club are nothing if not fastidious, there was a bit of foreshadowing that didn’t sit well with most of our members.

When Jean’s mother is hospitalized, she is given painkillers that make her a bit delusional. One of the things that she imagines is that there was a man going through the ward, inappropriately touching women. This is where the reader absolutely knows that there was no virgin birth, and it becomes clear how the pregnancy happened. But did we really need that?

Foreshadowing only works when it plants a bit of information that only later on, with a changed context, can be assessed in a different light.

In other words, showing that matron Alice had a nephew who wasn’t ‘right in the head’ may mean nothing when Jean visits her the first time. But later on, when Jean learns that Kitty has seen a long-haired ‘angel,’ she will re-assess the fact that Alice had a nephew of that age and description.

Whereas, telling us her mother had a vision of a man going through the ward, touching women, feels like resolution before the story has matured enough to be resolved on its own.

All in all, Small Pleasures is definitely one of our favorites—a book many of our members will lovingly remember for a long time.

With that, I’ll wrap up this month’s book club recap! Hope you enjoyed reading it. Until next time—keep safe and keep writing!

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Have you read this book? Did you like it? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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