Daughters of Jerusalem: A Review

I sought out Daughters of Jerusalem having enjoyed Charlotte Mendelson's third novel When We Were Bad.

Although the two novels differ substantially; in location, plot and characterisation, the underlying themes are just as focused on the dysfunctional family, of people not turning out to be quite as they seemed, and of the harrowing consequences as the truth begins to unfold.

The story takes place in Oxford, focusing on the family of a college Don and his two, quite different, daughters. There is Eve, studious and academically brilliant yet insecure, and Phoebe, a 'normal' child in a world of excessive abilities and intellect. Phoebe hides the crushing pain of perceived inadequacy behind a manipulative zeal to obtain ever more luxurious material goods. Eve merely runs away to her room. To study... and to cut herself. Their father seems largely lost in his studies and an all consuming rivalry with his academic colleague, a rivalry that will take the most dramatic of turns, and amidst it all is his wife, Jean Lux.

Jean Lux is tired. Tired of Oxford and all that it stands for:

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.

As the novel unfolds Jean realises just what it is she is tired of and who and what it will take to breathe life back into her weary existence.

Daughters of Jerusalem tackles dark, serious taboos - sex with a minor, self harm, lesbianism - but does so with a perfectly wrought comic edge. Art mirrors life in that, in amongst the tragedies and soul-searching, the daily grind dominates and in the minutiae of everyday life there is much that is funny, much that is dull and dreary and much that is plain annoying.

Communication, mis-communication and manipulation are strong themes and they support a plot that is full of genuine surprise, It speaks volumes for Mendelson's skill as a writer that the novel manages to feel thoroughly action packed whilst leaving times for such slow and stilted dialogue as this:

'I' they both say.
'Go on then.'
'No,' says Helena suspiciously. 'You go on.'
'I don't want you to think-'
'I don't,' Helena interrupts.

As in When We Were Bad the novels builds gradually towards realisation, of reversals of role and fortunes and then suddenly everything seems to happen at one, small seeds of awareness blossom and then, all at once, burst forth and then, all too soon, it is over and you are left wishing for more. This is one of the best books I have read in a while, thoroughly recommended.





More, more, more....
Two contrasting opinions from blog reviewers at Bookish Ramblings and Litlove

Press reviews in The Guardian and The Independent

An interview with Charlotte Mendelson on Tanita Tikaram's blog and, finally, an article in which Mendelson considers why writing and reading about dysfunctional families is so satisfying.

When We Were Bad: A Review

Claudia Rubin can sweep through a room and leave everyone enthralled with devotion. Claudia Rubin is a rabbi, a celebrity, a matriarch all rolled up into one glorious, sumptuous star of a person who seems ‘edible, a fertility symbol made of praline’. As When We Were Bad ends, Claudia Rubin is sitting down to write her family the ‘love letters they deserve’.

The letters may be the start of a new beginning, a new era for the Rubins family, but for now they are the final chapter in the saga of a family falling apart, a family shattering in all directions as each member unleashes their own dirty secret, each one a bomb that zooms to the very core of the family.

There's Leo the porn buying eldest son who runs off with a rabbi's wife and Frances the dependable one who secretly grapples in search of the love she should feel for her son, her husband, her step-daughters, the love that is alarmingly absent. There are the younger siblings who exist in a supported state of perpetual youth and of course their father, Norman, the retiring husband who has done anything but retire, squirrelling himself away instead to write the acclaimed book his wife has been dreaming of for herself.

They inhabit a world of contradiction where family is everything yet nothing, where siblings and parents frantically call each other for hourly updates yet remain entirely oblivious to what is really going on right under their noses, where the reliable become the unreliable and where the preoccupation with food and its plentiful abundance underlines the near absence of soul food, of genuine understanding and spiritual nourishment. That this family exists under the watchful gaze of Rabbi Claudia Rubin, famous for her spiritual nourishment of strangers, is all the more ironic.

To the naked eye the Rubins seem ‘doomed to happiness’ yet ultimately, it seems, they are just doomed. As Claudia clings desperately to her looks, her position, her longed for book publication, all around her are ensconced in their own little bubbles, and all of them are floating further and further away from the mothership. Apparently, Charlotte Mendelson wanted to call this book ’50 ways to leave your mother’ and you can see why. The entire family are trying to escape Claudia's stifling aura in a Freudian orgy of sex and affairs, of gender confusion and whispers of death.

The plot is ferociously fast matched only by Mendelson’s command of language and her ability to draw such engaging characters. On one level the novel works as a light-hearted, comic take on London’s liberal Jewish community. On another it is a dark and emotive psychological comment on the dysfunctional family, of transcending one’s roots... of potentially blowing those roots to bits.

I was captivated by the Jewishness, the ceremonies and tradition. I was impressed by tackling of taboos, most frequently those concerning mother love, or rather lack of it. I was swept along by the quick witted humour. In short I fell for this novel in the way those in the book fall for Claudia Rubin. Hook, line and sinker.




When We Were Bad was short-listed for 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction. Further reviews and a Q&A with the author can be found here.