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When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson
Catherine Shoard22 Feb 2008
Rabbi Claudia Rubin has it all: a swanky boho mansion in Gospel Oak, a hot broadcasting career, four gleaming children, a devoted husband, and a much-hyped handbook to family life poised for publication. Then Leo, her eldest, abandons his fiancée at the altar for the wife of the officiating rabbi, and the rest of the family eagerly follows his example into meltdown. Mendelson's thick Jewish stew is good soapy fun, full of cute characterisation and bone-dry detail: Claudia's mantelpiece is an artful tip of old photos, bowls of earrings and "melodramatically dying tulips".
Synopsis from Foyles.co.uk
The Rubin family, everybody agrees, seems doomed to happiness'. Claudia Rubin is in her heyday. Wife, mother, rabbi and sometime moral voice of the nation, everyone wants to be with her at her older son's glorious February wedding. Until Leo becomes a bolter and the heyday of the Rubin family begins to unravel...'As intelligent as it is funny. A beautifully observed literary comedy as well as a painfully accurate description of one big old family mess' - "Observer".'Fast-paced and engaging. Brilliant, touching and true' - Naomi Alderman, "Financial Times". 'Absolutely spellbinding, so funny, so moving, so totally believable' - Jacqueline Wilson. 'Intelligent and witty. The Rubin family may be a singular one but the delights and the difficulties its members have with sex and spirituality, food and domesticity, expectation and achievement, will have a universal appeal' - "Sunday Telegraph". 'Funny and emotionally true, this is a comedy with the warmest of hearts and the most deliciously subversive of agendas' - Book of the Month, Marie Claire. "When We Were Bad" is a warm, poignant and true portrayal of a London family in crisis, in love, in denial and - ultimately - in luck.
