I've already heaped all sorts of praise on Clare Chambers's books (here and here), so how do I approach her most recent novel, The Editor's Wife? Her prose is still smart, witty and stylish. She has a great knack for storytelling, and not just a simple, straightforward story but one that weaves in and out of time seamlessly. In a way her novels are modern day social comedies presented in a light-hearted manner though they usually have some weighty issue or turn of events at the heart of them. And I still consider her my favorite comfort read, and an intelligent one at that.
In The Editor's Wife Chambers trains her keen eye on the literary world telling her story from the vantage point of an aspiring young writer. Christopher Flinders is the younger son from an average, middle class family. His parents are nice but staid and his older brother somewhat eccentric. In his final year at university he decides to quit his studies and write full time, which will prove to be a more difficult and less romantic task than he envisioned. Living in a grotty bedsit with a communal kitchen he discovers it's not so easy to make ends meet so takes odd jobs to get him by. He works long enough to save a bit of money so he can spend time writing and then starts the process all over again. Over the course of the next couple of years he begins novel after novel finishing none of them.
"When I reached my twenty-fourth birthday, I had a sort of crisis. I suppose I had set myself that date as the deadline by which time I would be a successful writer, and yet I was still living in one room in Brixton, operating this schizophrenic three-month-shift system, and no one--apart from the girl whose indifference had killed off Ask Your Mother to Pass the Salt--had read a line of my work."
"I knew nothing about publishing, and no one who could advise me of the protocols of submitting manuscripts, but I was desperate for some professional feedback. My own conviction and self-belief were no longer sufficiently nourishing to sustain me."
So he sends off the first few chapters of his novel to a few publishers leaving his future in their hands. When he receives a positive response from an editor at a small publishing firm his life will be well and truly changed. Owen Goddard takes Chris under his wing and becomes a sort of mentor to him, inspiring him to work furiously on his story. By extension he comes to know Owen's family, his charming wife Diana and two small daughters. The Goddards are a cultured couple leading a happy, comfortable existence. Diana, always smartly dressed yet down to earth stays at home with her children yet was once a part of the publishing firm as well and misses the work. Always down at heel Chris takes to dropping by the Goddards for lunch and conversation and somewhere along the way finds himself falling for Diana.
"Diana always appeared happy to see me, and as I got to know her better I decided her pleasure was genuine, and not just practiced politeness. Her other confidantes were all mothers of young children: their conversation, though reassuring, held few surprises. It was so interesting, she said, to talk to someone whose circumstances and outlook were so different. We fell into complementary roles, as new friends often do, seizing on a characteristic and exaggerating it. She was the sensible one; I was the feckless one. She was sophisticated and cultured; I was an ignoramus. Much of this was put on, for our own amusement, because it was pleasant to play up our differences when they were no barrier to friendship, and to pretend conflict when there was none."
When the Goddards realize Chris will never finish his novel living in the dismal circumstances he lives, they make a very generous gift to him of enough money so he can spend his time writing and not worrying about paying bills. He finishes his book, but an impropriety on his part and worse an indiscretion by his well meaning though clueless brother causes a devastating rift between the Goddards and Chris that ultimately ends in tragedy and will rack him with guilt for years to come.
His novel is published but it fails to make a splash. He takes himself off to the wilds of Yorkshire and finishes his education as he knows the life of a writer is not meant to be his. Twenty years on he ends up living a life about as staid and ordinary as his parents, though perhaps not even so happy. After a failed marriage and then redundancy from the Inland Revenue he ends up in an unrenovated cottage on a sheep farm on the edge of the moors (though actually that sounded rather appealing to me). There's always a twist to Clare Chambers's stories and in this case it will come in the guise of a young and very pregnant woman doing research on Owen Goddard that brings up to the forefront all the miserable business from Chris's early adulthood.
I think what I love about Clare Chambers's novels, aside from the marvelous storytelling, is the fact that her characters always get second chances at happiness. No matter how imperfect they are, they are all very real and find themselves in situations that are entirely believable even though they might verge on the outrageous (truth is stranger than fiction you know). The Editor's Wife contains all those elements that I've come to enjoy so much in her work, though this one had a slightly different feel to it. I have to admit there was (is) something magical about Learning to Swim and In a Good Light that was lacking here, but that doesn't mean I liked it any less. It might be simply that I read (and reread) the other two books first, or perhaps because they have female narrators as opposed to Christopher (likeable though he may be). I still found this an immensely enjoyable read, particularly with its literary setting (and will add it to my list of books to reread). I wonder if she's working on anything new (this was published in 2007--surely it's time for another novel?). Happily I still have three unread books by Clare Chambers to look forward to this year, though I don't expect them to remain unread very long.