When We Were Bad ebook

by Charlotte Mendelson

Charlotte Mendelson Contemporary English

When We Were Bad opens on the wedding day of Leo, a reluctant groom who is managing this transition very badly indeed. Mendelson's writing is a joy because it is ultra-tight: not one spare word. Characters are summed up with witty precision.

When We Were Bad opens on the wedding day of Leo, a reluctant groom who is managing this transition very badly indeed. The son of Claudia Rubin, a famous female rabbi and mother of four much feted by the media, Leo has been having an affair with another rabbi's wife and he runs off with her minutes before his wedding to the unsuspecting Naomi. The Jewish community of north London is shocked, appalled and ready to blame the mother.

CHARLOTTE MENDELSON was born in 1972 and grew up in Oxford. Her third, When We Were Bad, was shortlisted for the Or. Her second novel, Daughters of Jerusalem, won the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and she was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.

When We Were Bad book.

When We Were Bad, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as a book of the year in the Observer, Guardian, Sunday Times, New Statesman and Spectator

When We Were Bad, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as a book of the year in the Observer, Guardian, Sunday Times, New Statesman and Spectator. Charlotte Mendelson is also the author of Love in Idleness and Daughters of Jerusalem, which won both the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Almost English, her fourth novel, was longlisted for the Booker Prize. ww. harlottemendelson.

When We Were Bad. Charlotte Mendelson. As intelligent as it is funny. A beautifully observed literary comedy as well as a painfully accurate description of one big old family mess’ Observer. Fast-paced and engaging.

The Los Angeles Times called WHEN WE WERE BAD, "Charlotte Mendelson's immensely funny and affecting third novel. a wonderful writer, economical, inventive, and, when appropriate, lyrical. Published by Thriftbooks

Charlotte Mendelson has been nominated for 'Writer of the Year' in the Stonewall Awards being held this .

Charlotte Mendelson has been nominated for 'Writer of the Year' in the Stonewall Awards being held this Thursday! Do you think she could win? She's up against some fierce competition: James Wharton, Neil McKenna, . Collins and Damian Barr. Here's an excellent interview with Charlotte Mendelson from 'You Wrote The Book' discussing Mendelson's most recent book 'Almost English', themes in her writing and plans for a future novel. A must listen - very entertaining! bookbasedbanter. YWTB! Charlotte Mendelson. Hello and welcome back to You Wrote The Book, a book based podcast hosted by Simon Savidge.

She was placed 60th on the Independent on Sunday Pink List 2007. Love in Idleness (2001). Daughters of Jerusalem (2003). When We Were Bad (2007). Almost English (2013). John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Somerset Maugham Award. Sunday Times 'Young Writer of the Year (shortlisted). London Arts New London Writers’ Award. K. Blundell Trust Award. Le Prince Maurice Roman d’Amour Prize (shortlisted). Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (shortlisted). by. Mendelson, Charlotte, 1972-. Books for People with Print Disabilities. Internet Archive Books.

When We Were Bad, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as a book of the year in. .

When We Were Bad, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as a book of the year in the Observer, Guardian, Sunday Times, New Statesman and Spectator. Country of Publication.

Critics in Britain are already raving about Charlotte Mendelson’s excoriatingly funny yet deeply humane novel about a glamorous London family that happens to be falling apart. The Rubins are the perfect family. They’re wonderfully happy and very glamorous. The mother, Claudia, is the ultimate Jewish matriarch: a powerful rabbi known for her charm, brains, and determination. Now this dynastic Jewish family is getting ready to marry off the perfect eldest son. History, community, and even gastronomy unite the guests lucky enough to attend this joyous occasion.But when the groom -- one minute before exchanging vows -- bolts with the wrong woman, the myths that have defined this family take on darker overtones. Mendelson’s astonishing eye for detail, as well as her just-right balance of plot and character, makes the unfolding of this story an uncommon treat. In a marvelously compressed style that also bursts with life, she reveals how all four adult Rubin children, and their parents, struggle with huge secrets, sexual frustration and sexual experimentation, and many betrayals.Charlotte Mendelson opens a window on a realm rarely explored in British society: the complicated world of English Jewry. But to watch this seemingly blessed family drastically, disastrously fall apart before regaining balance is to understand that their struggles -- like all of ours -- are universal ones.

GWEZJ

The story of a headlining female British Rabii and her family is one of laughter, tears and eccentricities. I'ts also about keeping up appearances in a family that is expected to show it's best side to the world at all times and even to one another if that can be managed.
At the beginning of the book a crisis occurs and the fought for façade of the perfect family is shaken. Read on as you wonder what will happen as more cracks appear- will the family implode or learn to relate with realism?
There's a lot going on in this book and yet it's very simply written, no flowery words, a more economical style. Not something I usually go for but it works well.

Ylonean

The contrast between my life style and that of the characters of the book, is bewildering indeed.And yet deep
down I share a lot with them.Religions don't really matter,what matters are the human beings involved in the
hard work of living.
Monica

Kazigrel

Excellent depiction of London Jewish lifestyle; A few clichés should hzave been culled, but altogether an enjoyable book with fine,, sharp-eyed observations

Granirad

Oh dear, I seem to have been unlucky with my choice of books again ("I'll go to bed at noon" was the previous one). This book left me thinking, "what was the point of that?". The characters were stereotypes, the language wooden, the situations banal. I should confess I am not Jewish; would that have made a difference, I wonder? It shouldn't, should it, if a book is well written? Anyway, NOT recommended.

NI_Rak

From the description and the previous reviews I read I was actually looking forward to reading this book. It started off bad with me first of all because from the first 2 pagres the reader is introduced to so many charaters...names left, right and centre! I couldnt keep up who was the father of who,who was the bride, who was whoes sister... I kept having to go back to previous pages to keep track. Once I go around to most of the characters the stoty just became boring... I cant really say more as I didnt read past the second chapter. Would be grateful though if someone can give me feedback on the folloing chapters. Maybe it is worth reading

Thordigda

There are all sorts of improbabilities in this novel. The first is right at the beginning, when the thirty-four year old Leo Rubin abandons his intended bride Naomi just as she enters the synagogue to run away there and then with Helen, the wife of Naomi’s family rabbi. There is naturally turmoil in his family - his mother Claudia who is a respected rabbi, his father Norman, and his three siblings Frances, Simeon and Emily. Claudia’s children, all in awe of their formidable mother, are all inadequate in one way or another; but it falls to Frances, who is married, to come over to do the most elementary things to keep the household running: to fix a light in the hall, to deal with a busted radiator and a broken kettle (improbability no.2: who would have done this before? Leo?)

Claudia is about to publish a book about the importance of family. Leo’s escapade threatens to undermine her credibility as the Family Goddess she hopes to become. Then Emily has an affaire which, in a different way, threatens it, too. And Norman, who has always played second fiddle to his wife, has not told her that he is about to publish a book which threatens to upstage hers: it is a biography about a (quite) well-known novelist about whom he has made a sensational discovery. But he is indiscreet with a woman who does know about the book. As for Claudia, she has a sombre secret herself which she keeps from all the family.

These are just some strands in a complicated plot of relationships and secrets. Leo’s behaviour is, for much of the novel, very erratic: he has no control over his drives. Frances is a poor, unhappy creature, with very low self-esteem, especially as a wife, mother and step-mother. In her distress she stumbles into a couple of relationships which, being Frances, aggravate her distress. The two younger siblings, in their late twenties, don’t have a job and live grottily on their own floor. Emily I found totally unbelievable. Simeon is a drug-taking oaf: another improbability is that his there is no reaction to his behaviour by his mother: when he was in his late teens, she had sent him to a psychiatrist for an interview “which lasted ten minutes and was never mentioned”. But then the family are unused to talk about their feelings: as in Mendelson’s earlier novel, “The Daughter of Jerusalem” (see my Amazon review), dialogues are often full of unfinished sentences, beating around the bush in embarrassment, or because a character is not allowed to finish sentences which another character doesn’t want to hear.

The tone (though not the substance) of the novel is humorous, at times rather manically so. The observations about a particular section of the Jewish community in London's Hampstead are gently satirical. There is a seder meal; the buying of the ingredients for it and their preparation has been elaborately described. It has been arranged by Claudia for some forty family members, friends, publishers and publicists (and one person who was not invited). It is intended to reestablish Claudia’s position in the community, to pull the family together - and to celebrate the imminent publication of her book. Needless to say, it is an occasion full of tensions.

The denouement sees Norman, Leo, even Frances no longer cowed by the matriarch. And Claudia does not crumple. She accepts.

The characters in “The Daughters of Jerusalem” had, in my view, much more credibility than those in this novel.