I struggled at first to get into this book. So many characters, all equally important as the story unfolds. All so flawed. All so Jewish. That isn’t a criticism. Just an observation that understanding the Rubin family (and all the characters are family members) means getting to grips a bit with what it means to be Jewish too.

I persisted. It was worth it.

The lives of every family member begin to unravel as son Leo’s life very publicly does, the day he leaves his wife-to-be some 4 minutes before they take their vows. It turns out that he isn’t the only one in inner turmoil.

By turns funny, touching and embarrassing, I was engaged with every character, despite their many and obvious flaws, long before the conclusion of the book. ( )

This is just a fantastic novel - darkly funny and bittersweet. Every family is unhappy in it's own way and this particular family is a doozey.This is Mendelson's third book but first to be published in the US - I am eager to read her earlier work. ( )

The Rubin family is completely dysfunctional, but to outsiders they appear to be quite the opposite. The family turns on the edicts of its matriarch, Claudia , London't most renowned rabbi. The family is expected to act as a single-minded unit. The children are not supposed to leave home and live lives of their own. The younger two are utterly incapable of functioning as adults anyway. And then the family starts to fall apart. It begins with Leo Rubin's running away from his own wedding with another woman. And then they fall like dominoes.

This book is about a seemingly perfect family falling apart in a highly comical way. Mendelson has a knack for writing comedy into small human actions. The family manages to be completely irritating and somewhat charming at the same time. By the end of the book I had developed real affection for Norm, the husband, and Frances, the eldest daughter. I was cheering both of them on to rebellion. Claudia and the younger son, Simeon, were a bit harder to stomach. Still the book is well-worth reading for the rich and entertaining world that Mendelson has drawn around the Rubin family. ( )

Oh my. Charlotte Mendelson, you sly one, you. Who knew that the erstwhile Booker nominee had written a novel that would totally consume me in the reckless manner that it did? The fact that I could barely stand to set it down for a minute only added to the overall satisfaction of a tightly written narrative, filled with witty observations and characters that you come to care about even though they have few redeeming characteristics.

Claudia Rubin is at the height of her powers: wife, mother, rabbi and moral authority for all, she is holding forth at the wedding of her oldest son, Leo, when the unthinkable happens. He bolts and runs off with none other than the wife of a fellow rabbi. Oi, the embarrassment! But that’s just the start as her family begins to unravel and Mendelson is there to report every misstep and unpeel the layers, one by one. Never has a mother’s suffocating hold on her family been more deservedly challenged.

She is so consumed by this incident that she fails to notice that her oldest daughter, Frances, is in the throes of post-natal depression. Youngest son Simeon is in a drug fueled haze and daughter Emily brings an unusual young man home (or is it a woman?). Meanwhile, patriarch Norman has been working, secretly, on a bombshell book that will bring him much more notoriety than anything his much more famous wife has published.
Claudia takes everything in stride and Mendelson describes her philosophy with an astonishing eye for detail:

”Claudia, running her fingertips over the plaster, thinks of skiing. A terrible sport: the ice, the pain, the slicing metal. It has, however, one thing in its favour. It demonstrates perfectly how best to lead one’s life. Simply the image of herself speeding over metaphorical moguls while other people, more earnest and dangly earringed, plough through the snowdrifts, emoting, discussing, sharing, has always cheered her.” (Page 216)

This is a wonderful literary comedy that will remind you of the ramshackle lives of people you know and will make you laugh out loud. Very highly recommended. ( )

Rabbi Claudia Rubin maintains a careful public façade of glamour and efficiency, but the illusion is shattered when her elder son, Leo, runs away in the middle of his own wedding and elopes with the officiating Rabbi’s wife. When we look more closely at Claudia’s life, we realise it’s all an illusion: she tolerates her husband’s literary efforts only because he’s unsuccessful, her children are only permitted lives of their own insofar as she says so, she leans heavily on her elder daughter, Frances, who has an unsatisfactory marriage of her own to deal with, her two younger children are feckless, selfish, and monstrous, and the whole family lives in squalor and decay. Over the course of the book Frances and Leo manage to effect some sort of escape, and Claudia’s long-suffering husband achieves a degree of success; the other two children remain unreformed and unspeakable, as does Claudia herself.

I’m not sure why I have this book, let alone in hardback; that is, it must have been on my Amazon wishlist, but I don’t know why. I presume it was an Amazon recommendation, in which case it should stand as an object lesson; this certainly isn’t something I would choose to read.

One thing I found particularly offensive was the author’s reverse racism, whereby she and her characters believe, or purport to believe, that everyone who isn’t themselves Jewish must automatically be anti-Semitic. I’m pretty sure that most people don’t much care one way or another. ( )