Admirers of Chambers’s subtle brand of social comedy will find much to enjoy in her latest - not least its wry observations on the ups and downs of the literary life. Her narrator, Christopher Flinders, published a single novel, when he was in his twenties, but has long since abandoned any thoughts of being a writer.
Now middle-aged, and with a broken marriage behind him, he has just lost his job with the Inland Revenue and feels that life has little left to offer him. Then he is contacted by Alex Canning, an academic from the University of York, who is researching the life of Owen Goddard, Christopher’s former editor. Suddenly, memories he has done his best to bury resurface. For it was Owen, more than anyone, who encouraged Christopher in his literary career - even giving him financial help. The brief period during the 1980s when Christopher enjoyed the friendship of Owen and his beautiful wife, Diana, was the happiest of his life. But events took a cruelly unexpected turn...
Twenty years on, Christopher must confront what happened between him and the Goddards, and, perhaps, make amends. The ingenuity with which past and present stories are interwoven is one of the pleasures of this funny and thoughtful novel; another is the sharpness of its observation of social nuance - a Dulwich dinner party, to which the gauche young writer is invited to meet a literary “lion” being one example.
The Editor’s Wife by Clare Chambers
Arrow, £7.99