In June 1954, the Sunday Pictorial Newspaper ran this story on their front pages: ‘British Doctors Give Their Startling Verdict After 6 Months’ Research on Virgin Birth’. It detailed the story of scientists who could not find proof that a man was involved in the conception of a daughter.

This was the inspiration for Clare Chambers’ latest novel ‘Small Pleasures.’ Jean is a journalist for a local paper in South London in 1957. A reader writes in and claims that her now-10-year-old daughter was born without a man. The mystery – the story – is Jean’s to break.

Jean meets the woman who wrote the letter, Gretchen, and her lovely daughter, Margaret, and Gretchen’s husband, Howard, who has raised Margaret with Gretchen. Jean becomes involved in their family. She is lonely, unmarried and lives with her mother, so after meeting Gretchen (and Howard in particular), life for Jean becomes more exciting.

She has the opportunity to look after Margaret, to visit their extended family. She buys Margaret a pet and enjoys hearing about her days at school.

In a twist (but no spoilers!) we learn that Gretchen has been planning on leaving Howard for some time, to revive a relationship with an old friend, a woman called Martha.

The science of 1957 is crude, offering no DNA-reading technology. Throughout the book, we are rooting for Jean: her success as a scoop-yielding journalist, who at the same time is hoping for Gretchen’s story to be true. Their lives become entangled and what follows is an exciting narrative you won’t want to put down. The novel’s end is startling and it will make you scream out loud.

I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Small Pleasures’: it’s so evocative of the time, and a truly wonderful story with fantastic, complex, believable characters.

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers was published by W&N on 9th July. I was very grateful to be sent a copy by the publisher to review.