ALMOST ENGLISH
“The air stinks of tuberose, caraway and garlic: the universal scent of central European hospitality. But Marina is not hospitable. After only an hour her skin is tender with cheek pinchings; she has been matchmade, prodded and instructed beyond endurance, and the night is young. Soon they will come to find her, to admire the shape of her fingernails, the thickness of her lashes, their eyes peeling back her clothes, weighing her like fruit. This is not new. She has been brought up to accept the questions and kisses as if nothing could please her more, however much lava is boiling inside.”
Buy the book
At your local independent bookshop or: Waterstones Hive Foyles Blackwells Book Depository Wordery Amazon
Praise for ALMOST ENGLISH
‘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
‘Exotic, magnificent and just a little bit sinister, it is the Hungarian characters who take over this beautifully written novel...Almost English has been longlisted for this year's Booker; it deserves to win for the quality of the writing alone...adelight. 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
‘A little masterpiece...wonderful on the fraught mother-daughter bond and on both the claustrophobia and delights of domestic family life, which are rendered in sentences crammed with telling incidentals. (This is perhaps my favourite pair: ’ Guardian ‘Charlotte Mendelson’s Man Booker Prize-longlisted novel takes that most English of literary genres – the boarding school comedy – and spices it with exotic ingredients drawn from Hungarian culture...Almost English is Mendelson’s fourth novel – her previous book, When We Were Bad (2007), was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction – and it demonstrates a mastery of narrative craft... the prose is a pure joy...And the whole book is sprinkled with handsome Hungarian phrases – Krumplisaláta, Hogy vagy, Egyszersmind – like a strudel dusted with sugar. It makes for a deliciously moreish read’
— Financial Times
‘The awkwardness and petty agonies of a teenage girl are perfectly captured in this Booker longlisted new novel from Charlotte Mendelson...Mendelson’s reflections on family and identity are both poignant and effortlessly profound’
— Book of the Week, Mail on Sunday
‘Mendelson’s wonderfully tortured Man Booker longlisted drama of secrets and longings...In a novel packed with sly observation and stealthy wit, this is just one moment: Almost English is a finely executed comedy of manners, with a dark side...Mendelson has produced three critically acclaimed novels already, including the Orange Prize-shortlisted When We Were Bad. Here again, she masterminds events with wit and ingenuity, shifting moods from darkness to light in an instant, and delivering some glorious moments of uproarious comedy. In Marina and Laura’s troubled relationship she finds a powerful source of dramatic tension; but it’s not the only one. Plot twists abound...Tensions build, a real crisis looms, and family history is revealed; and in a scene of outrageous farce, Marina and Laura rediscover their bond, the latter learning to take control of her life again. So the novel ends in optimism. But Almost English isn’t blinkered, or naïve. One of its charms is its apparent simplicity, masquerading as something light; just a good read. Don’t be fooled. Call it Jane Austen for the 21st century – a novel on a small scale, full of private preoccupations and a mischievously overblown supporting cast; a novel that nevertheless says something profound about the human condition’
— Scotsman
‘Her angst will ring toe-curlingly true for anyone who has tried to forget the years 15 to 18. It’s an itchy, humiliating, lusty, desperate time and Mendelson depicts it with such immediacy that you will swear you can smell Clearasil...a delicious jumble of tragi-comedy that should ensure an easy jump from the Booker longlist to the short’
— The Times
‘Charlotte Mendelson has said that she’s drawn to dysfunctional families with secrets. Her fourth novel, longlisted for the Booker Prize, harvests more strange fruit from this fertile soil...Marina is an excruciatingly authentic adolescent: self-obsessed, self-loathing and crashingly gauche in adult company. There are exquisitely embarrassing moments both in her stumbling adventures and in her mother’s. This is a very funny novel, dancing close to farce without ever mistreating its characters. Even Laura, who has hit her forties while avoiding adulthood, is drawn with great tenderness. It is Laura and Marina’s story, but the Hungarian sisters have several scene-stealing turns. Reading Mendelson’s easy, assured prose is like sinking into something soft and velvety. You almost sigh with pleasure...this is such a warm book, my advice is simply to sit back and enjoy it’
— Telegraph
‘Almost English is long-listed for this year’s Man Booker Prize, and Charlotte Mendelson writes of the inner monologues and quiet frustrations that plague an all-female, half-Hungarian household trying to fit into society with a wry humour that carries echoes of Zadie Smith and Zoe Heller’
— Stylist Top 10 must-reads of August
‘Mendelson’s keen eye for what makes relationships tick has already led to a place on the shortlist for the Women’s (formerly Orange) Prize and new novel Almost English is as good as we’d hoped...This funny, wise and heart-warming 1980s-set novel is perfect summer reading’
— Elle
‘There can’t possibly exist anyone who escaped adolescence without feeling like an outsider at one point or another. So everyone should be able to empathise with Marina, the outwardly reserved but inwardly passionate teenager at the centre of this new offering from the author of When We Were Bad...This is a fun, fierce story about love, family, being yourself and ‘the ugly years’’
— Psychologies
‘This Booker longlisted novel muses on family and what it means to be English...We didn’t want it to end’
— Grazia
‘I was thoroughly beguiled by Charlotte Mendelson’s Almost English...This is a wonderful novel and the descriptions of both Hungarian food and pronunciation are delightful. Von-darefool, dar-link’
— Bookseller
‘This is a coming-of-age story that fuses an English boarding school farce with a Chekhovian tragicomedy — but always has something of a fairytale running through it’
— Evening Standard
‘Mendelson’s account of imperfect escape is as witty as it is painful’
— Guardian, Holiday reading: the best books to pack this summer feature
‘The Booker longlisted novel is a warm, wry and lively account of teenager Marina ...the humanity in Mendelson’s observations and her clever, comic writing make this a sparkling treat’
— Metro
‘I loved Mendelson’s last book When We Were Bad – and this one’s just as good... This story is full of sharp observations and touching characters’
— Essentials