Learning to Swim - Clare Chambers

61%

28.01.26

I could say exactly what I said about Back Trouble but this was slightly more memorable, with more vivid characters. I didn't like the anti-only-child rhetoric though!

Back Trouble - Clare Chambers

59%

23.10.25

Wry humour, sharp observation and a strong sense of place and time - yes, it's a Clare Chambers novel. I have a few to read and this was engaging and interestingly structured, if not ultimately memorable or profound.

In a Good Light - Clare Chambers

 

64%

06.01.23

I much preferred this to Chambers' later and more famous Small Pleasures. Not much happened, but what did happen happened engagingly and showed how a character-driven plot can still make a good story.

Small Pleasures - Clare Chambers

 

60%
25.12.20

This was compared to Barbara Pym and Anne Tyler - well, it's a low-key story about women struggling through society but otherwise it was too heavy handed to reach those dizzy heights. Readable enough but from all the smog 'n' smoking (yes, we get it, it was the 50s) to the unnecessarily tragic or possibly open-ended ending (not a spoiler - the preface prefigured the probable death of a character), it just needed a lighter touch.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers

57%
17.07.16

Yes, it's written well enough, and the space-worlds and characters are carefully thought out. It's nice to have a generally upbeat story... but should a good book really be 'nice'? Shouldn't it be a little challenging, a little subversive, a little less derivative, a lot less, well, twee? I enjoyed it well enough but I doubt if I'll remember it in a month or two.