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Welcome to the website of
Charlotte Mendelson, author of When We Were Bad, Daughters of
Jerusalem & Love in Idleness
When
We Were Bad was
shorlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008. Find out more here

Listen:
Charlotte talking about a
profoundly unromantic teenage trip to Florence on BBC Radio 4
Summer
REading:
'When We Were Bad combines writing
to linger over, a plot to race through and characters to care
about...investigates their individual crises and epiphanies with
cleverness and charm' Guardian
'Charlotte
Mendelson's When We Were Bad is
a perfervid romantic comedy, elegantly written and wonderfully
readable, in which the likeable Rubins siblings struggle for emotional
freedom from their family's powerful embrace' Helen Simpson, New Statesman
blogGing:
A video blog about where When We
Were Bad is set, filmed for the Guardian:
click
here
And here are two blogs Charlotte wrote about it, for the Picador
website and the Guardian
Recent Reviews
& Interviews:
'Charlotte Mendelson
is one of the most accomplished novelists in the UK today. She
writes about the pleasures and the perils of love, desire and family
life with devastating precision and wit'
Sarah
Waters ( More… )
Charlotte
writing about the 'startlingly
ugly' room in which she writes in the Guardian
- click
here
And
a selection of recent paperback reviews:
‘Wryly humorous…we envy, despise and ultimately
care deeply
for this extravagantly dysfunctional family’
Sunday Times
Both extremely funny and acutely
painful...Mendelson, whose writing glitters with stylistic panache and
moral force, masterfully evokes the complex web of emotions that yokes
her well-realised characters together'
Sunday Telegraph
'The Rubins, and their assorted
foibles, flaws and neuroses, are at once unique and utterly
recognisable...her extraordinary eye for human behaviour will endear
readers to each and every Rubin...Combining frankness with a sharp and
intelligent humour, When We Were Bad
is an irresistible treat'
Guardian
'Wickedly funny and
poignant...beautifully observed and painfully authentic. It confirms
Mendelson, author of the dazzling Daughters
of Jerusalem, as one of our most versatile and original young
authors'
Daily Mail
'Charlotte Mendelson attracted much
praise for her wickedly sharp second novel, Daughters
of Jerusalem, but compared with this it seems almost demure. When We Were Bad is relentlessly good:
crammed with brilliant, skewering details...it is a mark of
[Mendelson's] skill that these never impede the plot; as the wheels
fall off the Rubin wagon, she maintains both pace and intrigue
admirably'
Observer
For more
reviews of When We Were Bad, please click
here
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