CLARE CHAMBERS Small Pleasures ****

I started reading this book on the basis of glowing reviews on TV and in The Guardian, not knowing that much of it is set literally just a couple of streets away from where we live in Hayes! 

It’s a wonderfully compelling story.

The year is 1957 and the book paints a vivid picture of life at the time, seen through the eyes of an unmarried 39-year-old woman, a reporter on the local paper, as she investigates the story of a possible virgin birth (!) and gets to know the young mother, her daughter, and her husband... 

Topping and tailing the novel is the true story of the Lewisham train crash of December 1957, in which 90 people died - most of them on a train bound for Hayes.