Learning To Swim

“An intelligent and escapist read - well written and funny” Daily Express “Modern, intelligently observed and highly original” Daily Mail “A spirited account of growing up and falling in love” Good Housekeeping “This delicious novel - is a joy from beginning to end - a perfect novel” Lisa Jewell “Engagingly written” Prima

Clare Chambers was born in south east London in 1966. Her first novel, Uncertain Terms, was published when she was 25. She has since written nine further novels, including Learning to Swim (1998), which won the Romantic Novelists’ Association best novel award, and In a Good Light (2004), which was longlisted for the Whitbread best novel prize.

Chambers began her career as a secretary at the publisher Andre Deutsch, where Diana Athill was still at the helm. They not only published her first novel but also made her type her own contract. She went on to become an editor there herself until leaving to raise a family and concentrate on her own writing. Some of her experiences working for an eccentric, independent publisher in the pre-digital era found their way into her novel The Editor’s Wife (2007).

Small Pleasures (2020) was her first novel in a decade and became a word-of-mouth hit. It was selected for BBC2’s Between the Covers and chosen as a book of the year by The Times, the Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, and Spectator among others. It went on to win Pageturner of the Year at the British Book Awards and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Her latest novel is Shy Creatures (2024).

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