SHY CREATURES (WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON) (PB)

Croydon, 1964. Art therapist Helen Hansford is working in a psychiatric hospital, where she has been having passionate but precarious affair with her married colleague, the charismatic Dr Gil Rudden. Helen's structured life is upended when William Tapping - a silent, thirty-seven-year-old man with a beard down to his waist - arrives at the hospital. As Helen helps William express himself through art, she becomes increasingly entangled in his mysterious past. A life-affirming exploration of loneliness, love and the quiet forces that shape our lives.