But he rediscovers his passion, between sheets of one sort or another, and fears he is about to betray his wife. Norman’s career has been so restricted of life in the shadow of Claudia’s that he is not sure what it is any more. And Jacobson is not a bad comparison overall, although what we have here is a dilute version: it has much of his wit and guile but maintains a much steadier pace, with more respect for good straightforward storytelling, than Jacobson’s otherwise terrific books like The Making of Henry and Who’s Sorry Now? (Marina Lewycka is another comparison some might see, but Mendelson is a far greater stylist than that suggests.)Īnd the story it tells is one of family: the Rubins, headed by Claudia – rabbi, voluptuous celebrity, “schtuppable pioneer” – and her husband Norman. It is an embracing, romping, all-consuming balm of a book. Which is not to say that When We Were Bad is offputting or excluding to us goyisher readers. Howard Jacobson last year published Kalooki Nights, which he described as “the most Jewish novel that has ever been written by anybody, anywhere,” and it’s a model that Mendelson might have had in mind. Not because she is a novelist who happens to be Jewish, but because Jewishness is the subject matter in which her wonderful third novel When We Were Bad richly revels. Charlotte Mendelson would not mind, I hope, being described as a Jewish novelist.
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