|
WHEN WE WERE BAD
The Rubin family, everybody
agrees, seems doomed to happiness.
…If this, the few minutes
before the wedding, could be frozen and kept unsullied by the future –
the Rubins in their heyday – their happiness would be complete. But it
cannot be frozen. Things happen.
It is the wedding day of Leo, the
glamorous Rabbi Claudia Rubin’s first-born son. Leo, like his
sister Frances before him, like, in fact, the famously happily-married
Claudia herself, seems about to marry well. But even perfect
families can fall apart and today, at Leo’s glorious wedding, with
every eye upon them, the spectacular fall of the Rubin family is about
to begin.
Praise for "When We Were Bad"
"As intelligent as it
is funny…brilliant. A joy"
Observer, Sunday May 13
"This is a dazzling
portrait of a family in crisis. Watchful, alert to details and
insightful, it more than meets the challenge of its opening line: 'The
Rubin family, everybody agrees, seems doomed to happiness'"
Guardian, Saturday May 19
‘So pleasurable...a
consummate novelistic accomplishment' The Times, Saturday May 19
'I wasn't posh and I
wasn't confident, and I was really hideous' Charlotte talks to Aida
Edemariam
Guardian, May 8
"Truth Springs
Maternal" Naomi Alderman
Financial Times
When family ties
unravel…
Scotland on Sunday
"I didn't get to bed
until three last night after reading When We Were Bad in the
bath. The guilt, the shame, the triumphs, the love and anxieties
of family life - Mendelson unpeels the layers like an onion. A
novel to devour"
Fay Weldon
in Harper’s Bazaar
"A novel that wittily
and searingly explores the relationships between parents and their
adult children. …an elegant comedy of longing and survival."
Los Angeles Times, Saturday, August 11(read more…)
"Like Roth in his
early work, in Goodbye Columbus or Portnoy's Complaint, Mendelson
succeeds in creating a family environment that is both appealing and
appalling. When We Were Bad is a funny, smart and delightfully
ambivalent novel about surviving the people who love us most."
Montreal Gazette, Saturday, August 11 (read more…)
‘A
completely brilliant book. Breathtakingly good’
Barbara Trapido
‘Absolutely
spellbinding, so funny, so moving, so totally believable’
Jacqueline Wilson
'Never has the
perfect family cracked and crumbled with such elegance, warmth and
humour’
Meg Rosoff
|
