THE EXHIBITIONIST

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022, The Exhibitionist is the extraordinary fifth novel from Charlotte Mendelson, a dazzling exploration of art, sacrifice, toxic family politics, queer desire and personal freedom.

THE TIMES NOVEL OF THE YEAR

A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2022

A GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BOOK OF THE YEAR

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Praise for THE EXHIBITIONIST

‘It takes the most ferocious intelligence, skill, and a deep reservoir of sadness to write a novel as funny as this. I adored it’
— Meg Mason, author of Sorrow & Bliss

‘Charlotte Mendelson’s family dramas — particularly the sharply funny Daughters of Jerusalem (2003) — are almost Shakespearean in their twists and revelations. Her latest is no exception, and the judges of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction agree: they placed it on their longlist before it hit the shelves… With an electrifying narrative full of life’s messiness, this is a real contender for the Women’s Prize’
—  Laura Hackett, Sunday Times

‘I don't think I've ever read anything that is simultaneously so elegant and so propulsive - every single sentence Charlotte Mendelson writes is arrestingly powerful. I think this book is beautiful, but it's also funny, furious, sexy, blissfully hot and cold and wild in its rage’
— Daisy Buchanan, author of Insatiable

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

‘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

‘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 

‘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

‘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)

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

‘Exceptional’
— Woman & Home

‘Charlotte Mendelson has created a magnificently monstrous character...a crackling tale...finely observed, witty and incredibly tense’
— The Times (Summer Reads Picks)

‘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 

‘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

‘Masterful’
— The Big Issue 

‘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

‘Beautifully observed, witty and incredibly tense’
— The Times

‘Soul-scouringly good’
— Nigella Lawson

‘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

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

‘Mendelson is a master at family drama, and plots don’t get much more dramatic than this … Exhilarating’
— Susie Mesure, The Times

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

‘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)

‘A devastating treat of a novel: funny, furious, dark and delicious’
— Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith