about charlotte
Charlotte Mendelson has written four novels published by Picador/Mantle, one non-fiction book about her tragic gardening obsession, Rhapsody in Green, much literary journalism and work for radio, and is Gardening Correspondent for the New Yorker.
Her most recent novel, Almost English, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. 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, The Sunday Times, New Statesman and Spectator. Her second novel, Daughters of Jerusalem, won both the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and she was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award.
She grew up in Oxford and currently lives in London with her daughter and cat, and spends most of her time in the garden.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND PRIZES
2001 Love in Idleness
2003 Daughters of Jerusalem
The Somerset Maugham Award
The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
Shortlisted for the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
Shortlisted for the Le Prince Maurice Roman d’Amour Prize
2007 When We Were Bad
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction
Chosen as one of Waterstones 25 Authors of the Future
2013 Almost English
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction
2016 Rhapsody in Green
A SELECTION OF REVIEWS
‘A novelist’s beautiful, useful essays about her tiny garden’
—India Knight
‘Wonderful’
—TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
‘Brilliant and witty…Mendelson’s second bewitchingly erotic and darkly dramatic novel confirms her as a stylish, perceptive chronicler of the heart’s hidden desires’
—DAILY MAIL
‘Brilliant…exhilarating…Exciting and memorably written, this is one of those rare reads that has you galloping to the end, but feeling bereft at having to say goodbye so soon’
—INDEPENDENT
‘A superb, hilarious farce of dysfunctional academic family life. Funny, exciting, lyrical, poignant, redemptive - it was a privilege to review this book’
—GUARDIAN
‘Intelligent and enjoyable…excellent’
—THE SUNDAY TIMES
‘A strange, stealthy, headily scented seethe of a book’
—Ali Smith, GLASGOW HERALD
‘Glorious...for anyone who loves fruit, vegetables, herbs and language. It makes you see them with new eyes’
—Diana Henry
‘Unique and utterly recognisable...extraordinary eye for human behaviour...an irresistible treat’
—GUARDIAN (pb review)
‘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’
—Gerard Woodward, GUARDIAN
‘Mendelson confirms herself to be a hugely gifted writer, particularly in her scene-setting which melds wit and sharp-eyed observation, and her extended comic interludes’
—THE SUNDAY TIMES
‘A mastery of narrative craft...she can take risks and get away with it. There are moments of subtle lyricism, best of all when Frances, hopeless as a new mother and step-mother, comes, like a frozen statue, slowly, hopefully back to life...Nothing here is overwritten. This is not a book about faiths in London or multi-culturalism. Engrossing…emotional depth and stylistic boldness’
— Olivia Cole, LITERARY REVIEW
‘Mendelson's novels inhabit similar territory to those of Maggie O'Farrell, with the same capacity for extreme noticing, the same profound emotional intelligence shaping the characters and driving the narrative’
— OBSERVER
“Exotic, magnificent and just a little bit sinister, it is the Hungarian characters who take over this beautifully written novel . . . Mendelson’s novels inhabit similar territory to those of Maggie O’Farrell, with the same capacity for extreme noticing, the same profound emotional intelligence shaping the characters and driving the narrative. But Mendelson’s world is sharper, her sense of the world a little more cynical. Almost English has been longlisted for this year’s Booker; it deserves to win for the quality of the writing alone . . . Almost English is a delight. Beautifully written, warm, funny and knowing, it manages to seize an entire slice of Europe for itself, a vast empire full of new and interesting questions about how close, and how far apart, all these postwar worlds have made us. Above all, it is written with love. And good food”
— OBSERVER
‘Written with tremendous authority, insight, humour and even wisdom...convincing and moving...funny, absorbing and certain to linger in the imagination’
—SPECTATOR
“Charlotte Mendelson is much admired by the cognoscenti and ALMOST ENGLISH ought to be a bestseller. The account of a girl from a family of Hungarian aunts, dealing with love and old lechers at a ghastly boarding school in the 1980s, is sheer bliss — pure rueful comedy with endless resourcefulness . . . I adore her novels and wish there were many more of them . . . The [Booker] shortlist should comprise McCann, Tóibín, Mendelson, Crace, House and Catton. House’s novel is the one you ought to read, and Mendelson’s the one that everyone will read and love”
— PHILIP HENSHER, SPECTATOR
Related
How did unhappy 'swot' Charlotte Mendelson become one of our most exciting novelists? She talks to Aida Edemariam
This startlingly ugly room is where I try to write. But, awful as it looks, the Useless Room, aka the Hopeless Room, represents progress. Until recently, I worked in a sea of Sticklebriks in the sitting-room
The author describes her best distraction techniques, the odd people she meets in the British Library, and the occasional triumphs of a typical working day
Eastern European soul food, for me, begins in Bangkok. Where else would one expect to find an expert on chicken paprikash? My family’s last surviving one lives there, with a street cat called Mango and her half-Thai, quarter-Indian, quarter-Hungarian-Jewish, entirely American grandson.