Small Pleasures

The novel Small Pleasures, written by Clare Chambers and published in 2020, follows Jean Swinney, a journalist at the North Kent Echo in the town of Hayes, Kent, in England in the 1950s. As Jean investigates Gretchen Tilbury’s claim that her daughter was conceived without a father, she not only finds answers to Margaret Tilbury's conception, but also engages in the mysteries of love, life, and family. Small Pleasures analyzes motherhood, womanhood, domesticity, and decorum—and what happens when these roles collide.

Small Pleasures was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2021. Chambers, who grew up in London, studied at Oxford University before moving to New Zealand with her husband where she wrote her first novel, Uncertain Times (1992). Her novel Learning to Swim (1998) won the 1999 Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists’ Association. Chambers now resides in Kent, where Small Pleasures is set.

This study guide uses the 2022 First Mariner paperback edition.

Content Warning: This study guide features references to rape, physical abuse, and anti-LGBTQ+ bias.

Plot Summary

Small Pleasures opens with a North Kent Echo news article for December 6th, 1957. The article describes a railway disaster where 80 people are killed and over 150 are injured.

The novel flashes back to six months before this accident. Jean Swinney, a journalist and the only woman on the editorial team at the North Kent Echo, begins an investigation into a possible “virgin birth.” Gretchen Tilbury, mother to Margaret, writes to the Editor of the Echo in response to an article recently published on parthenogenesis—the spontaneous conception without the fertilization of an egg—that the birth of her child is an example of this phenomenon. As Jean interviews Gretchen, she learns that Margaret was conceived during Gretchen’s stay at St. Cecilia’s convalescent home for women, run by Matron Alice Halfyard.

As Jean digs deeper into Gretchen’s life, she meets and falls in love with Howard Tilbury, Gretchen’s husband and Margaret’s adoptive father. Torn between her duty as a journalist and as a caregiver to her elderly mother, Jean struggles with her feelings for Howard. As she uncovers the truth of Margaret’s birth and the Tilbury’s marriage, Jean learns that Howard and Gretchen aren’t in romantic love. Instead, Gretchen is in love with Martha—a woman she met at St. Cecilia’s; Gretchen married Howard to avoid the stigma of having a baby out of wedlock.

When Gretchen leaves Howard for Martha, Jean continues investigating Margaret’s conception through medical testing and personal interviews. Eventually the truth is revealed: Gretchen was raped in a drugged sleep by Victor, Alice’s nephew. Jean is left with the burden of this secret—the Echo decides to print the story as an unexplained mystery. Meanwhile, after Jean and Howard decide to pursue their romance, Howard is killed in the train accident that opens the novel.