DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM
Daughters of Jerusalem, Charlotte’s second novel, is set in North Oxford, where she grew up. Here, in the Lux family, trouble stirs. Eve, the elder daughter, is seething with loathing for her charismatic sister Phoebe; meanwhile, their mother's best friend, Helena, is about to make a startling confession. She is sick of this – of Oxford’s sooty castles…She is sick of navy-blue corduroy, Gothic arches, famous fig trees, shabby dons’ wives, cellars, rivers, genius children, stuttering and gold leaf. It is your fault, she thinks, approaching her husband’s college, as she glimpses her neighbour, an entirely silent botanist, attempting to untangle his own beard from a hawthorn tree. None of you are normal. Is normal. And I am.
Praise for DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM
‘Brilliantly observed…acerbic social comedy of the most unflinching, satisfying kind’
—SUNDAY TIMES
‘Accomplished...beautiful, with flashes of dark humour’
—JEWISH CHRONICLE
‘A polished piece of satire, combining broad comedic strokes with exquisite observations. Her writing abounds in tiny, sensuous details’
—Stephanie Cross, OBSERVER
‘Miss Marple meets Rosamond Lehmann…luscious prose and droll comedy…suffused with longing, studded with recherché words and clotted with gastronomic metaphors which make you feel that you should be reading on a chaise longue, stuffing yourself with violet creams’
—OBSERVER
‘Bold...engaging...an undoubted talent for comic observation’
—THE TIMES
‘Daughters of Jerusalem is an edgy affair, mixing arcane absurdity with casual cruelty. The result is a bold and darkly comic novel’
—DAILY MAIL
‘Assured writing...hilarious...delightful’
—INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
‘Written with great sharpness and has thrilling detail’
—Julia Darling
‘Wonderfully observed...Full of surprises and brilliant set pieces’
—WATERSTONE’S BOOKS QUARTERLY
‘Wonderfully observed...Full of surprises and brilliant set pieces’
—WATERSTONE’S BOOKS QUARTERLY
‘Charlotte Mendelson seems to bear a grudge against the whole of Oxford. And I’m glad. Her tale...had me guiltily neglecting both work and household responsibilities for the day I was glued to it...Mendelson turns the pressure up and up. This is funny, moving and gorgeously bitchy’
—TELEGRAPH
‘Brilliantly observed...acerbic social comedy of the most unflinching, satisfying kind’
—Caroline Gascoigne, THE SUNDAY TIMES
‘A witty and absorbing work of fiction…wonderful…surprising and satisfying’
—TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
‘Superb, hilarious...funny, exciting, lyrical, poignant, redemptive - it was a privilege to review this book’
—GUARDIAN
‘Savagely funny and hilariously cruel, it…convinces through the sheer power of the writing’
—THE SUNDAY TIMES
‘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
‘Parts of this book are very funny, parts slightly sinister. And if you think this suggests a comparison with Evelyn Waugh, that would be justified, too, by the excellence of Ms Mendelson’s style. Her prose is taut without being manneredly Spartan; the mot juste is supplied on every occasion’
—OXFORD TIMES
‘A superb, hilarious farce of dysfunctional academic family life. Funny, exciting, lyrical, poignant, redemptive - it was a privilege to review this book’
—GUARDIAN
‘This novel has been scandalously forgotten since its 2003 publication, but, magnificently peppery and stylishly written, it summons up with enormous vigour a wholly accurate picture of the farce that is life in a troubled academic family’
—THE SUNDAY TIMES’S list of ‘Guaranteed Classics To Read in Lockdown’, March 2020