‘A delicious, heartbreaking family snapshot about thwarted ambition, misplaced loyalty and good and bad love. Secrets abound. Fabulously written and utterly compelling’ Marian Keyes, author of Grown-Ups

‘Soul-scouringly good’ Nigella Lawson

‘Like Katherine Heiny and Maria Semple, Mendelson is skilled at rendering the grotesque fascinating. This book would be disturbing, is disturbing, especially on the subject of masculine control, but it is also funny; so funny’ The I Paper

‘A welcome return for the chronicler of family secrets, with a tale of art, ego and marriage’ Guardian

'A vivid family portrait…A deluded patriarch sits at the centre of this deliciously evocative novel laced with sex and art’ – Lucy Scholes, Financial Times

 ‘A treat...Excoriating observation of the art world, crazy toxic family intrigues, wit, wisdom and brilliant writing’ Muriel Gray 

‘Mendelson’s heady present-tense narration mingles eroticism, absurdity and pathos, capturing the intensity of illicit love, the corrosiveness of bullying, the bottomlessness of narcissism' Madeleine Feeny, Telegraph

‘Exceptional’  Woman & Home

'Charlotte Mendelson has created a magnificently monstrous character...a crackling tale...finely observed, witty and incredibly tense' The Times 

‘A compulsive distillation of artistic ego, midlife passion and family dysfunction. It’s set over a single weekend, as folk gather to toast the once famous and still monstrously controlling painter Ray Hanrahan at his comeback exhibition. Among them are his grown children and his downtrodden wife, Lucia, whose own long-neglected artistic career threatens finally to soar. The zestfully crafted drama that follows is hilarious, sexy and thoughtful’ Mail On Sunday 

‘Charlotte Mendelson’s four previous novels are clever, funny, [and] ferociously observant… This [the fifth] novel is a portrait of the artist as a monster…a fine and haunting book’ Sarah Moss, Guardian

‘People aren’t supposed to write novels like this one any more...Well, thank God they do’ Daily Mail 

'A truly wonderful novel, and a funny and wise one, too; the individual components sparkle, the whole movement beguiles' Sunjeev Sahota, author of 2021 Man Booker-longlisted The China Room

'Charlotte Mendelson’s furiously funny fifth novel takes the idea of a toxic family drama and runs wild with it. Over the course of one tempestuous weekend, the unhappy Hanrahans fall apart, their story playing out with a devastating, exuberant glee. .. The cause of all the misery is marvellously monstrous failing artist Ray Hanrahan, who is about to stage the exhibition that will make or break his career. … Honest and frenetically paced, this is a painfully funny look at art, ambition and damaging family dynamics' Sunday Express

‘Mendelson's great success is to make the endless sacrifices, self-conscious denials and forbidden emotions of the Hanrahans heartbreakingly relatable...The Exhibitionist is an undeniable success’Literary Review

‘Longlisted for the Women's Prize, this is a darkly funny portrait of a dysfunctional family bent out of shape over decades by its narcissistic artist patriarch -- and of what happens when his wife will no longer squashes her own creative energies. Wise, waspish and emotionally astute, it's addictive reading’ Guardian (Summer Books)

‘Read it for the characters (some you’ll love, some you’ll want to shake!), who I missed when I finished this funny family drama’ Good Housekeeping (Best Summer Reads)

‘Masterful’ The Big Issue