When We Were Bad
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | Charlotte Mendelson |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | A Novel |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
| Honors | |
| Claudia Rubin is in her heyday. Wife, mother, rabbi, and sometime moral voice of the nation, it is she whom everyone wants to be with at her older sons glorious February wedding. Until Leo becomes a bolter and the heyday of the Rubin family begins to unravel. Leo’s calm, married, more mature sister, Frances, tries to hold the centre together, but the stresses force her to re-examine her own middle way and lead to a decision as shocking in its way as Leo’s has been. Meanwhile, Claudia’s husband Norman has, uncharacteristically, a secret to hide—a secret whose imminent unveiling he can do nothing about. A warm, poignant, and true portrayal of a London family in crisis, in love, in denial, and—ultimately—in luck. | |
Critics in Britain are already raving about Charlotte Mendelson’s excoriatingly funny yet deeply humane novel about a glamorous London family that happens to be falling apart.
The Rubins are the perfect family. They’re wonderfully happy and very glamorous. The mother, Claudia, is the ultimate Jewish matriarch: a powerful rabbi who, thanks to her charm, her brains, and her determination, has beaten the dull male rabbis at their own game. Now this magnificent dynastic Jewish family is getting ready to marry off the perfect eldest son, Leo, to the very appropriate Naomi. History, community, and even gastronomy unite the guests lucky enough to attend this joyous occasion.
But when the groom—one minute before exchanging vows—bolts with the wrong woman, the myths that have defined this family take on darker overtones. Mendelson’s astonishing eye for detail, as well as her just-right balance of plot and character, makes the unfolding of this story an uncommon treat. In a marvelously compressed style that also bursts with life, she reveals how all four adult Rubin children, and their parents, struggle with huge secrets, sexual frustration and sexual experimentation, and many betrayals.
Charlotte Mendelson opens a window on a realm rarely explored in British society: the complicated world of English Jewry. But to watch this seemingly blessed family drastically, disastrously fall apart before regaining balance is to understand that their struggles—like all of ours—are universal ones.
