What do you think?
Rate this book
Almost English
Home is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
In a tiny flat in West London, sixteen-year-old Marina lives with her emotionally delicate mother, Laura, and three ancient Hungarian relatives. Imprisoned by her family’s crushing expectations and their fierce unEnglish pride, by their strange traditions and stranger foods, she knows she must escape. But the place she runs to makes her feel even more of an outsider.
At Combe Abbey, a traditional English public school for which her family have sacrificed everything, she realises she has made a terrible mistake. She is the awkward half-foreign girl who doesn’t know how to fit in, flirt or even be. And as a semi-Hungarian Londoner, who is she? In the meantime, her mother Laura, an alien in this strange universe, has her own painful secrets to deal with, especially the return of the last man she’d expect back in her life. She isn’t noticing that, at Combe Abbey, things are starting to go terribly wrong.
In a tiny flat in West London, sixteen-year-old Marina lives with her emotionally delicate mother, Laura, and three ancient Hungarian relatives. Imprisoned by her family’s crushing expectations and their fierce unEnglish pride, by their strange traditions and stranger foods, she knows she must escape. But the place she runs to makes her feel even more of an outsider.
At Combe Abbey, a traditional English public school for which her family have sacrificed everything, she realises she has made a terrible mistake. She is the awkward half-foreign girl who doesn’t know how to fit in, flirt or even be. And as a semi-Hungarian Londoner, who is she? In the meantime, her mother Laura, an alien in this strange universe, has her own painful secrets to deal with, especially the return of the last man she’d expect back in her life. She isn’t noticing that, at Combe Abbey, things are starting to go terribly wrong.
402 pages, Paperback
First published July 23, 2013
81 people are currently reading
2401 people want to read
About the author
Charlotte Mendelson
14 books115 followersCharlotte Mendelson (born 1972) is a British novelist and editor. Her maternal grandparents were, in her words, "Hungarian-speaking-Czech, Ruthenian for about 10 minutes, Carpathian mountain-y, impossible to describe", who left Prague in 1939.
When she was two, she moved with her parents and her baby sister to a house in a cobbled passage next to St John's College, Oxford, where her father taught public international law.
After the King's School, Canterbury,she studied Ancient and Modern History at the University of Oxford, even though she knows now, with great regret, that what would have suited her best was English literature at somewhere like Leeds.
She says she became a lesbian suddenly. "It was boyfriends up to 22 or 23. Not a whiff of lesbianism. Not even a thought. But I'm very all or nothing. It was all that, and now it's all this. There was about a 10-minute cross-over period of uncertainty, but it was really not that bad."
She has two children with the journalist and novelist Joanna Briscoe.
She won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2003 and the Somerset Maugham Award in 2004 for her second novel Daughters of Jerusalem. She was shortlisted for the Sunday Times 'Young Writer of the Year Award in 2003.She contributes regularly to the TLS, the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and the Observer. She is an editor at the publishers Headline Review. She was placed 60th on the Independent on Sunday Pink List 2007
When she was two, she moved with her parents and her baby sister to a house in a cobbled passage next to St John's College, Oxford, where her father taught public international law.
After the King's School, Canterbury,she studied Ancient and Modern History at the University of Oxford, even though she knows now, with great regret, that what would have suited her best was English literature at somewhere like Leeds.
She says she became a lesbian suddenly. "It was boyfriends up to 22 or 23. Not a whiff of lesbianism. Not even a thought. But I'm very all or nothing. It was all that, and now it's all this. There was about a 10-minute cross-over period of uncertainty, but it was really not that bad."
She has two children with the journalist and novelist Joanna Briscoe.
She won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2003 and the Somerset Maugham Award in 2004 for her second novel Daughters of Jerusalem. She was shortlisted for the Sunday Times 'Young Writer of the Year Award in 2003.She contributes regularly to the TLS, the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and the Observer. She is an editor at the publishers Headline Review. She was placed 60th on the Independent on Sunday Pink List 2007
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 251 reviews
August 29, 2013
I was really looking forward to reading this novel but was ultimately disappointed. Mendelson starts off well with her creation of the ancient Hungarian family crammed into a a London flat smothering their daughter-in-law with advice and Hungarian delicacies. The prose is clean, the characters well-developed and above all, it was really funny. However, as the narrative develops and the core story line of the relationship between Laura and her daughter emerges, things start to go awry. Mendelson hasn't been able to make this dysfunctional relationship strong enough and one can imagine an editor saying ' Come on, Charlotte, perhaps you could add a few more plot-lines here' with the result that we end up with some banal, expository family feud that brings nothing to the story, the bizarre relationship between Viney and Marina which again doesn't really go anywhere and the very weak reconciliation attempt with the ex-husband supposedly riddled with cancer. In fact, the male characters were very poorly drawn and even with the Hungarian in-laws I felt you could lose one of them without affecting the story the slightest bit. In the end, what started out full of promise dissolved into mush. It did remain quite funny throughout though.
August 26, 2013
This book just took forever going no place. Both main characters - Marina and her mum - are utterly frustrating and tongue tied, chapters upon chapters go by with nothing more than a recitation of the anxious impossibility of telling each other that they are each unhappy. You will want to give each a hard shaking. The plot "twists" are foreseen from very early on (there's only one place Marina's infatuation with the Vineys can be going, as soon as you know that Alexander Viney is taking a peculiar interest), while the unraveled family backstory is both implausible and a snooze. (One oddity of this book is that there are several hints that Marina's family is Jewish and that family members were lost in the Holocaust, but the book - like its protagonists - refuses to do more than obliquely hint at facts better not spoken of, so you may think that the family secret has something to do with that - but it doesn't - in fact, I don't even think it makes sense). Anyway, a huge snooze - I have read it called "chick lit" - but chick lit is usually juicier, plotty and emotional if nothing else - while this is just BORING.
January 21, 2014
Now, umm, I want to, uh, say, uh write that, I did umm, I couldn't, I umm, well not completely, liked or disliked, hmmm, actually, I mean, wanted to like this book, but...sorry, I just...umm, well, it was pretty annoying, sorry...but I have to say, well that's about it...
Most of Charlotte Mendelson's Almost English is written in this totally annoying style. Can her 2 protagonists, Laura and her daughter, Marina, be so alike, be so indecisive, so annoying? And even if they were, why tell us this in almost 350 pages of which it's really hard to understand what plotting there is. A mystery about where Marina's Czech or Hungarian family came from, how they lost all their money, why Laura's husband leaves her, why she decides to live with her mother-in-law and her husband's family. All told in this spotty, unfinished way. If you want to get an idea of the plot, read the Amazon or Goodreads blurb. The Hungarian/Czech/Transylvanian family comes alive, dahrlink...They it seems say just what they think in this mishmash of English-Hungarian. But it's not enough to sustain 384 pages of what might have been a good book which umm,appears to have a plot slight as it is.
Most of Charlotte Mendelson's Almost English is written in this totally annoying style. Can her 2 protagonists, Laura and her daughter, Marina, be so alike, be so indecisive, so annoying? And even if they were, why tell us this in almost 350 pages of which it's really hard to understand what plotting there is. A mystery about where Marina's Czech or Hungarian family came from, how they lost all their money, why Laura's husband leaves her, why she decides to live with her mother-in-law and her husband's family. All told in this spotty, unfinished way. If you want to get an idea of the plot, read the Amazon or Goodreads blurb. The Hungarian/Czech/Transylvanian family comes alive, dahrlink...They it seems say just what they think in this mishmash of English-Hungarian. But it's not enough to sustain 384 pages of what might have been a good book which umm,appears to have a plot slight as it is.
January 2, 2016
In reference to the Man Booker Prize Longlisting for this novel.
No, no, no, no, no, no and no. Sorry judges but seriously how did this novel make it onto the 2013 longlist? I would hope that there was some heated debate about including it, otherwise Robert Macfarlane (Cambridge AND Oxford), Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (Oxford), Natalie Haynes (The Independent and The Guardian), Martha Kearney (BBC) and Stuart Kelly (The Scotsman, The Guardian and The Times) have a bit of explaining to do. Such noble qualifications and history amongst you and I know reading 151 novels to cut it down to 13 would be a monumental task but surely you couldn’t have all fallen asleep when reading this?
Have I said this already? No, no, no, no, no, no and no. The Man Booker website review says: “In a tiny flat in West London, sixteen-year-old Marina lives with her emotionally-delicate mother, Laura, and three ancient Hungarian relatives. Imprisoned by her family’s crushing expectations and their fierce unEnglish pride, by their strange traditions and stranger foods, she knows she must escape. But the place she runs to makes her feel even more of an outsider.” That précis actually reads better than the book itself.
For my full review visit my blog at http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/
No, no, no, no, no, no and no. Sorry judges but seriously how did this novel make it onto the 2013 longlist? I would hope that there was some heated debate about including it, otherwise Robert Macfarlane (Cambridge AND Oxford), Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (Oxford), Natalie Haynes (The Independent and The Guardian), Martha Kearney (BBC) and Stuart Kelly (The Scotsman, The Guardian and The Times) have a bit of explaining to do. Such noble qualifications and history amongst you and I know reading 151 novels to cut it down to 13 would be a monumental task but surely you couldn’t have all fallen asleep when reading this?
Have I said this already? No, no, no, no, no, no and no. The Man Booker website review says: “In a tiny flat in West London, sixteen-year-old Marina lives with her emotionally-delicate mother, Laura, and three ancient Hungarian relatives. Imprisoned by her family’s crushing expectations and their fierce unEnglish pride, by their strange traditions and stranger foods, she knows she must escape. But the place she runs to makes her feel even more of an outsider.” That précis actually reads better than the book itself.
For my full review visit my blog at http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/
December 17, 2013
Almost English is an ordinary book without a plot. It is another one of those novels by a literary author whose good writing skills can only get her so far.
It is agonisingly slow with two annoying, spineless women - Laura and Marina - as main characters. They live with three ancient Hungarian relatives in a tiny flat in West London. And nothing happens.
This is one of those books that reminds me why I mostly avoid reading novels that are nominated for literary prizes.
It is agonisingly slow with two annoying, spineless women - Laura and Marina - as main characters. They live with three ancient Hungarian relatives in a tiny flat in West London. And nothing happens.
This is one of those books that reminds me why I mostly avoid reading novels that are nominated for literary prizes.
August 3, 2015
Charlotte Mendelson CAN write, which is why this wasn't just a blah book to me, but an actively, offensively bad one. In ways made clearest to me in her author's note, which states in effect that because she herself "grew up knowing only the smallest and most confused details" of her maternal grandparents' cultural background, making her characters equally ignorant provided "a wonderful excuse" to substitute repetitive lists of forreng foodstuff (ooh!) and strange old-lady clothes (ewww!!) and funnee speleings (teehee!) for actual, research? evocation of atmosphere? the slightest degree of depth rather than flat exoticism 101? in conjuring that horrible spectre which so often haunts this kind of 'cross-cultural' literary fiction, 'local colour'.
Here's Zsuzsi, one of the amorphous blob of old lady relatives whose plot-mechanical purpose is to shout "TAIR-ible" or "VON-dairfool" at regular, somehow-highly-essential-to-the-protagonists intervals:
That's to establish her character, I think. Here, again, a scant dozen pages before the end of the book:
And that's the extent of her, and their, character development!
This aspect was particularly irritating to me because it stood in such stark contrast to G. B. Stern's warm, witty, and resonant depiction of HER fictionalised unconventional Central European matriarchy (down to the same coopted English mother and daughter of mixed loyalties thing) in The Matriarch, which I'd read recently.
The rest (I really can't bring myself to use the word 'substance' here) of the book also unfortunately called to mind the far superior Prep and The Line of Beauty; in contrast to those books' careful delineations of class, gender and social agonies, following the struggles of both Laura and Marina was about as enjoyable and illuminating as being privy to the inner thoughts of two particularly dim kittens being slowly drowned in slime, in a vat courtesy of OBVIOUS PLOT DEVICES, INC.
Here's Zsuzsi, one of the amorphous blob of old lady relatives whose plot-mechanical purpose is to shout "TAIR-ible" or "VON-dairfool" at regular, somehow-highly-essential-to-the-protagonists intervals:
"VOT-apity you do not want I lend you blooze," she says, complacently stroking her own cuff, the chocolate-brown silk with a gold stirrup motif bought in Paris when she was married, before Laura was born. Her gilt earrings are the size of plums.
That's to establish her character, I think. Here, again, a scant dozen pages before the end of the book:
.This morning, with her sunglasses and lipstick, Zsuzsi is wearing a short silver-fox jacket borrowed from Perlmutter Sári, her black "SOL-opette-troo-sair, VAIR-y smart," a silky blooze in silver and black, silver wedge-heeled sling-backs and a great gold "necklet" like a medal. Her perfume is stunningly powerful.
And that's the extent of her, and their, character development!
This aspect was particularly irritating to me because it stood in such stark contrast to G. B. Stern's warm, witty, and resonant depiction of HER fictionalised unconventional Central European matriarchy (down to the same coopted English mother and daughter of mixed loyalties thing) in The Matriarch, which I'd read recently.
The rest (I really can't bring myself to use the word 'substance' here) of the book also unfortunately called to mind the far superior Prep and The Line of Beauty; in contrast to those books' careful delineations of class, gender and social agonies, following the struggles of both Laura and Marina was about as enjoyable and illuminating as being privy to the inner thoughts of two particularly dim kittens being slowly drowned in slime, in a vat courtesy of OBVIOUS PLOT DEVICES, INC.
October 30, 2013
I look forward to the Booker Prize Longlist every year, and I try to read at least one before the Booker Prize winner is announced. _Almost English_ leaped out at me because the plot synopsis was enticing. I love novels about England, social class, education, and girlhood, and this novel is about all of these topics. Nonetheless, the novel was disappointing. I do give it three stars because I made it to the end, and if that happens, the book was worth the effort.
Intellectually, I think I "get it." Mendelson does a fine job of taking the most mundane and uninteresting aspects of life and depicting them as they are: mundane, tempests in teapots, etc. I think it's tough to pull off writing about not very much at all, and Mendelson succeeds in doing just that. I also think that Mendelson does a fine job of showing readers how life appears through the eyes of an insecure girl who thought that Combe would allow her to be who she wishes to be, all to find out that she has made a mistake.
Nonetheless, the plot grows tedious, the mother, Laura, always seems particularly flat, in spite of being a protagonist, and when the action does start to pick up a bit in the end, the conclusion strikes me as well, stupid. Of all the things Marina could do, what she does makes no real sense, leaves readers thinking. . .WHAT!? And that's in large part because after her climactic exit from the Prize Giving assembly, there seems to be no real development of Marina's character or point of view, no catharsis for readers. Had her spectacular exit made sense to readers, more development would not have been necessary, but as it is, the end is simply confusing and unsatisfying. The subplot, with the dastardly deeds of the Viney family in regards to Karolyi family, also seems contrived, the coincidences too unreal (Victorian, but without the rest of the narrative structure being Victorian to fit).
It certainly did not deserve to make it to the Booker Short List. I am guessing its nomination in the first place has to do with subtleties and an artistic vision that I simply did not quite grasp.
Intellectually, I think I "get it." Mendelson does a fine job of taking the most mundane and uninteresting aspects of life and depicting them as they are: mundane, tempests in teapots, etc. I think it's tough to pull off writing about not very much at all, and Mendelson succeeds in doing just that. I also think that Mendelson does a fine job of showing readers how life appears through the eyes of an insecure girl who thought that Combe would allow her to be who she wishes to be, all to find out that she has made a mistake.
Nonetheless, the plot grows tedious, the mother, Laura, always seems particularly flat, in spite of being a protagonist, and when the action does start to pick up a bit in the end, the conclusion strikes me as well, stupid. Of all the things Marina could do, what she does makes no real sense, leaves readers thinking. . .WHAT!? And that's in large part because after her climactic exit from the Prize Giving assembly, there seems to be no real development of Marina's character or point of view, no catharsis for readers. Had her spectacular exit made sense to readers, more development would not have been necessary, but as it is, the end is simply confusing and unsatisfying. The subplot, with the dastardly deeds of the Viney family in regards to Karolyi family, also seems contrived, the coincidences too unreal (Victorian, but without the rest of the narrative structure being Victorian to fit).
It certainly did not deserve to make it to the Booker Short List. I am guessing its nomination in the first place has to do with subtleties and an artistic vision that I simply did not quite grasp.
November 7, 2015
Quite a sweet, light semi-comic novel. Seemed pretty good for the sort of thing it is - the writing was better than I expect from anything with an almost-chicklit cover. (I'd barely heard of Charlotte Mendelson before and wouldn't have picked this up if I wasn't reading Booker books this year). Very nice use of free indirect style. But then a hypothetical half star got knocked off by an event less than ten pages from the end - not exactly deus ex machina, but it looked like the work of someone who'd written herself into a corner.
This has been compared with A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian but I've not read that, so no idea how similar they are. Almost English is a semi-autobiographical story so it can't simply be a copy of the Lewycka, even if the protagonist does share her first name.
It's a shame Mendelson didn't make more of the flamboyant older Hungarian characters rather than concentrating on Marina's fairly typical teenage growing pains story, her mother's sense of being a middle-aged underachiever, and social class themes. These can be found in any number of books but were at least delicately observed here - the author has a good eye for the psychology of families and for balancing sensitivity and absurdity. Even when I found aspects of characters that grated they were understandable and well drawn. (e.g. The descriptions of Laura's love for her daughter were, to me, creepy for a child that age. But as Marina missed and liked her mother, they were okay really and I guess it showed me how these things can work when the personalities are compatible in a family.)
Really not bad - but don't expect it to have any big things to say just because it's on the Booker longlist.
This has been compared with A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian but I've not read that, so no idea how similar they are. Almost English is a semi-autobiographical story so it can't simply be a copy of the Lewycka, even if the protagonist does share her first name.
It's a shame Mendelson didn't make more of the flamboyant older Hungarian characters rather than concentrating on Marina's fairly typical teenage growing pains story, her mother's sense of being a middle-aged underachiever, and social class themes. These can be found in any number of books but were at least delicately observed here - the author has a good eye for the psychology of families and for balancing sensitivity and absurdity. Even when I found aspects of characters that grated they were understandable and well drawn. (e.g. The descriptions of Laura's love for her daughter were, to me, creepy for a child that age. But as Marina missed and liked her mother, they were okay really and I guess it showed me how these things can work when the personalities are compatible in a family.)
Really not bad - but don't expect it to have any big things to say just because it's on the Booker longlist.
August 3, 2013
Really didn't like this book although I have enjoyed all Charlotte Mendelson's previous novels. Was hugely irritated by the Hungarian pronunciation inflicted on English words - my imagination would have done this for me...Thought the various story layers were irritating rather than clever....and as for the endless pages of school life...just tedious. I am astonished this is a Booker longlist novel.
I suppose it is intended as a comedy of manners, the suffocating tightly knit old Hungarian matriarch holding a type of sway over the generations but to me it was just boring.
I suppose it is intended as a comedy of manners, the suffocating tightly knit old Hungarian matriarch holding a type of sway over the generations but to me it was just boring.
August 27, 2013
Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson, which appears on the 2013 Booker longlist, and tells the story of 16-year-old Marina and her mother Laura, both of whom live in a cramped two-bedroom flat in Bayswater with three elderly, increasingly eccentric Hungarian relatives of Laura’s husband, who disappeared when Marina was a toddler leaving her mother forced to rely on the hospitality of his family for the next 13 years.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Laura, who is also in the midst of a dreary, passion-free affair with her charmless employer, is almost suicidally depressed. Meanwhile Marina, painfully awkward and a mile out of her depth socially, is desperately unhappy at the boarding school to which she has begged her family to send her. Marina can’t bear to confess that Combe Abbey has been a disaster, and Laura, missing her daughter every second of every day, can’t bear to ask her.
It’s possible that this introduction to Almost English hasn’t made it sound like a comedy, but that’s precisely what it is, albeit an occasionally rather dark one. It’s a novel about fitting in, about identity, and about keeping secrets, peppered with cringe-inducing misunderstandings and social confusion – Marina’s country house weekend with her sort-of-boyfriend Guy and his wealthy family, all boisterous gun-dogs and dressing for dinner, is particularly excruciating, as is the complete lack of any privacy afforded to either Marina or Laura in the Bayswater flat (Marina’s bedroom is a through-route to the flat’s bathroom; Laura sleeps on the sofa and keeps her clothes in the sideboard. Marina's elderly aunts are fond of asking her loudly if she's menstruating).
Both Laura and Marina are frustratingly prone to poor decisions and skewed logic, but somehow still likeable – Marina perhaps more so than Laura, who comes across at first as being infuriatingly passive, but comes into her own as the story progresses. Rozsi, Zsuzsi and Ildi, the formidable but ultimately kind, protective relatives who have taken Laura under their wing, are a hoot, and not quite as interchangeable as they might have been in the hands of an author of lesser skill.
My main criticism of Almost English is really with its plot, which contains a couple of rather anticlimactic revelations and concludes rather implausibly, leaving some dangling loose ends. But ultimately the plot of this novel isn’t really the point; it’s character that matters here, and this is an observant and revealing exploration of what it’s like to be part of two communities without quite fitting into either of them.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Laura, who is also in the midst of a dreary, passion-free affair with her charmless employer, is almost suicidally depressed. Meanwhile Marina, painfully awkward and a mile out of her depth socially, is desperately unhappy at the boarding school to which she has begged her family to send her. Marina can’t bear to confess that Combe Abbey has been a disaster, and Laura, missing her daughter every second of every day, can’t bear to ask her.
It’s possible that this introduction to Almost English hasn’t made it sound like a comedy, but that’s precisely what it is, albeit an occasionally rather dark one. It’s a novel about fitting in, about identity, and about keeping secrets, peppered with cringe-inducing misunderstandings and social confusion – Marina’s country house weekend with her sort-of-boyfriend Guy and his wealthy family, all boisterous gun-dogs and dressing for dinner, is particularly excruciating, as is the complete lack of any privacy afforded to either Marina or Laura in the Bayswater flat (Marina’s bedroom is a through-route to the flat’s bathroom; Laura sleeps on the sofa and keeps her clothes in the sideboard. Marina's elderly aunts are fond of asking her loudly if she's menstruating).
Both Laura and Marina are frustratingly prone to poor decisions and skewed logic, but somehow still likeable – Marina perhaps more so than Laura, who comes across at first as being infuriatingly passive, but comes into her own as the story progresses. Rozsi, Zsuzsi and Ildi, the formidable but ultimately kind, protective relatives who have taken Laura under their wing, are a hoot, and not quite as interchangeable as they might have been in the hands of an author of lesser skill.
My main criticism of Almost English is really with its plot, which contains a couple of rather anticlimactic revelations and concludes rather implausibly, leaving some dangling loose ends. But ultimately the plot of this novel isn’t really the point; it’s character that matters here, and this is an observant and revealing exploration of what it’s like to be part of two communities without quite fitting into either of them.
October 20, 2013
Seventeen-year-old Marina is suffering from a surfeit of romanticism and elderly Austro-Hungarian relatives. To escape the latter, she has gone off to boarding school, where her overpowering self-consciousness continues to set her apart, despite various overtures of friendliness from other girls. When befriended by a younger boy whose family turns out to be everything that Englishness represents to Marina, the scene is set for a hilarious, horribly uncomfortable unravelling of events and characters.
Meanwhile, Marina's mother, Laura, is suffering from a surfeit of Austro-Hungarian in-laws, a would-be lover and the return of the last man she ever expected to see again. But the person she really wants is Marina, who seems increasingly lost to her.
Perhaps it's my age, but I was much more interested in and sympathetic to Laura's situation than I was Marina's. Mendelson is one of the best chroniclers of excruciating awkwardness that I've encountered, but that doesn't make Marina's scenes any easier to read; in some ways, they're a run-down of every teenage girl's "most embarrassing moments" cranked up to eleven. Laura's situation felt more unlikely (and much sadder), but also somehow truer - and she's the one I wanted to know more about by the end.
Meanwhile, Marina's mother, Laura, is suffering from a surfeit of Austro-Hungarian in-laws, a would-be lover and the return of the last man she ever expected to see again. But the person she really wants is Marina, who seems increasingly lost to her.
Perhaps it's my age, but I was much more interested in and sympathetic to Laura's situation than I was Marina's. Mendelson is one of the best chroniclers of excruciating awkwardness that I've encountered, but that doesn't make Marina's scenes any easier to read; in some ways, they're a run-down of every teenage girl's "most embarrassing moments" cranked up to eleven. Laura's situation felt more unlikely (and much sadder), but also somehow truer - and she's the one I wanted to know more about by the end.
March 14, 2018
What can I say about this book? It’s typical Charlotte Mendelson. Her funny and quirky style was there right from the off. And I love her style. I really do. But I feel that compared to When We Were Bad, there is so much lacking. When We Were Bad had a storyline and drama and was gripping. Almost English was kinda meh. There was a story, but even the big reveal was pretty mixed up, and I had to re-read it several times.
I feel like Almost English was taking us on a journey with no sense of its final destination, and that if anything it was just kind of rambling along.
I don’t think I’d really recommend this one. When We Were Bad is a much better example of the work Mendelson is capable of.
I feel like Almost English was taking us on a journey with no sense of its final destination, and that if anything it was just kind of rambling along.
I don’t think I’d really recommend this one. When We Were Bad is a much better example of the work Mendelson is capable of.
November 6, 2020
This started off very well: dark and funny and evocatively descriptive.
But it lost steam very quickly. The Hungarian relatives are indistinguishable and aren't developed at all. All they do is say "Von-darefool" incessantly, and obsess over food. The promised insights into the conflicts between Hungarian and English cultural identity never materialise.
The mother-daughter protagonists are wet and irritating, nothing much happens for 200 pages, and then comes a ridiculous and unsatisfying ending.
But it lost steam very quickly. The Hungarian relatives are indistinguishable and aren't developed at all. All they do is say "Von-darefool" incessantly, and obsess over food. The promised insights into the conflicts between Hungarian and English cultural identity never materialise.
The mother-daughter protagonists are wet and irritating, nothing much happens for 200 pages, and then comes a ridiculous and unsatisfying ending.
August 7, 2013
“Almost English is about the ugly years and a startlingly plain adolescent.”
While Author Charlotte Mendelson’s description is definitely apt, the novel is actually held together by two protagonists—mother and daughter—facing their own crises in West London during the 1980s.
Sixteen-year-old Marina is being raised by her emotionally fragile mother Laura and three elderly Hungarian relatives in a cramped basement flat filled with strange traditions and even stranger foods.
Longing to escape this tiny Hungarian enclave, Marina goes off to Combe Abbey, a posh, traditional English boarding school, hoping to reinvent herself and “set off towards the glorious adulthood which awaits her.”
Desperately homesick, Marina feels more of a misfit than ever as she tries to conform to English ways and customs. Several comedic episodes follow when she is invited to a classmate’s country home.
Struggling to deal with her own painful secrets and dilemmas, Laura wonders if she is on the brink of a nervous breakdown or simply having “a disappointing life.” Abandoned by a handsome and spoiled husband, Laura moves in with her mother-in-law where she lives uncomfortably for over a decade. The insecure and often distracted forty-two-year-old fails to notice that Marina is desperately in need of an intervention.
The scenes involving the endearing trio of aged Hungarian women provide much of the domestic humor. Their conversations are sprinkled with “darlinks” and “von-darefuls” and their extravagant gestures create constant drama, much to Marina’s chagrin.
A delightful read, Almost English is worthy of its Man Booker Prize nomination.
Thanks to Harper Collins Canada for my review copy.
While Author Charlotte Mendelson’s description is definitely apt, the novel is actually held together by two protagonists—mother and daughter—facing their own crises in West London during the 1980s.
Sixteen-year-old Marina is being raised by her emotionally fragile mother Laura and three elderly Hungarian relatives in a cramped basement flat filled with strange traditions and even stranger foods.
Longing to escape this tiny Hungarian enclave, Marina goes off to Combe Abbey, a posh, traditional English boarding school, hoping to reinvent herself and “set off towards the glorious adulthood which awaits her.”
Desperately homesick, Marina feels more of a misfit than ever as she tries to conform to English ways and customs. Several comedic episodes follow when she is invited to a classmate’s country home.
Struggling to deal with her own painful secrets and dilemmas, Laura wonders if she is on the brink of a nervous breakdown or simply having “a disappointing life.” Abandoned by a handsome and spoiled husband, Laura moves in with her mother-in-law where she lives uncomfortably for over a decade. The insecure and often distracted forty-two-year-old fails to notice that Marina is desperately in need of an intervention.
The scenes involving the endearing trio of aged Hungarian women provide much of the domestic humor. Their conversations are sprinkled with “darlinks” and “von-darefuls” and their extravagant gestures create constant drama, much to Marina’s chagrin.
A delightful read, Almost English is worthy of its Man Booker Prize nomination.
Thanks to Harper Collins Canada for my review copy.
December 1, 2015
No one character stood out prominently for me, but I did like the personalities of the sister, and the fact that they had remained together as a group so late in their lives. I loved the fact that they were all so different.
I particularly liked the personality of Zsuzsi, she was quite a character and it sounds like she had an eventful life. I would love to have neighbours like Karolyi sisters, I’m sure they would have lots of interesting stories to tell.
I least liked Guy’s father, Alexander Viney. He was vile, pompous and ridiculous. Mariana’s account of the episode in the car was stomach churning and ugh! Too much information. I hate it when old geezers go after the naïve. Poor, Mariana, but she managed to squirm out of the awkward situation. Even if she did end up baring all for the entire school, cringe!!
I found it took me a while to engage with the book, it was slow to start but definitely became more interesting as the story developed. I felt sad for Laura she’d been really let down and felt unable to express her real feelings for her daughter that was painful. I felt like she had no real expectations in life and settled for less. When her ex-husband showed up that irritated me. Although we never really discovered why he left, I really wondered had he only come back because he needed looking after.
I learnt that Hungarians eat a lot of weird stuff, it’s probably delicious, but I doubt it!! Grated noodles with calf’s lung filling, that sounds horrendous!
I related to the angst of Mariana, it’s an awful time making the transition from childhood, so awkward and embarrassing! The book was so well written,I was riveted!
I particularly liked the personality of Zsuzsi, she was quite a character and it sounds like she had an eventful life. I would love to have neighbours like Karolyi sisters, I’m sure they would have lots of interesting stories to tell.
I least liked Guy’s father, Alexander Viney. He was vile, pompous and ridiculous. Mariana’s account of the episode in the car was stomach churning and ugh! Too much information. I hate it when old geezers go after the naïve. Poor, Mariana, but she managed to squirm out of the awkward situation. Even if she did end up baring all for the entire school, cringe!!
I found it took me a while to engage with the book, it was slow to start but definitely became more interesting as the story developed. I felt sad for Laura she’d been really let down and felt unable to express her real feelings for her daughter that was painful. I felt like she had no real expectations in life and settled for less. When her ex-husband showed up that irritated me. Although we never really discovered why he left, I really wondered had he only come back because he needed looking after.
I learnt that Hungarians eat a lot of weird stuff, it’s probably delicious, but I doubt it!! Grated noodles with calf’s lung filling, that sounds horrendous!
I related to the angst of Mariana, it’s an awful time making the transition from childhood, so awkward and embarrassing! The book was so well written,I was riveted!
May 2, 2023
A gentle, rather old fashioned story about a teenager trying to fit in at her new boarding school, mainly by denying the existence of her loving but embarrassing, elderly Hungarian relatives. I can imagine that anyone with elderly Central-European relatives will probably be able to relate to some of the characters portrayed; I lived in Central Europe for a couple of years and did come across people who fit the stereotypes displayed here very well. At the same time anyone who has been thrown into a social situation which leaves you feeling ashamed of your background, as well as being ashamed of this shame; will be able to relate to some of the dilemmas Marina produces for herself as she tries to fit in. However, in my opinion, too many of the characters here are just difficult to like even a little bit; each time you find yourself starting to connect with them they do/say something so slap-worthy as to destroy what little empathy you have for them. The whole book is just an uncomfortable read. While I can see that this is probably a deliberate choice on the part of the author, to reflect the general discomfort felt by the two principle characters, I do think that maybe the effect is pushed a little too far at times. The most obvious comparison for this is probably Marina Lewycka's 'Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’; however this is lacking much of the warmth that makes Lewycka's writing such a joy. Not a disappointment as such, but I am left hoping this doesn't get past the long-list stage of the Booker Prize.
December 27, 2015
DNF at 38%
I just couldn't do it. It started quite well, but it went downhill from there. From what I've read, it's slow, boring and the plot didn't do anything for me. I didn't care for the characters AT ALL. The writing was basically just rambling. Marina and Laura, the protagonists, were annoying. Laura was 'emotionally delicate', ok, but I didn't like her all the same. Marina was like your 'average teenager' worrying about every little detail, which was very relatable at times, but when the whole book is just full of silly little worries? I'm sorry, it's just not enjoyable (which maybe wasn't the point of this book, but then again the plot wasn't really going anywhere and so I'm struggling here to actually see the point of this book). The most interesting parts of the book for me was learning about the elderly Hungarians, being apart of a culture that I'm unfamiliar with. However, I found that most of the book (that I read) didn't really concentrate on this at all. Rather, it just discussed Marina's worries about being an outsider, which although is understandable, it was a bit excessive, and her obsession with Simon Flowers, a senior at her boarding school. Laura just worries about her affair with the local doctor, and occasionally about her husband returning.
For those reasons, I decided to DNF this book. I might return to it in future, seeing as it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. But for now, there are better books on my shelf that I would rather be reading.
I just couldn't do it. It started quite well, but it went downhill from there. From what I've read, it's slow, boring and the plot didn't do anything for me. I didn't care for the characters AT ALL. The writing was basically just rambling. Marina and Laura, the protagonists, were annoying. Laura was 'emotionally delicate', ok, but I didn't like her all the same. Marina was like your 'average teenager' worrying about every little detail, which was very relatable at times, but when the whole book is just full of silly little worries? I'm sorry, it's just not enjoyable (which maybe wasn't the point of this book, but then again the plot wasn't really going anywhere and so I'm struggling here to actually see the point of this book). The most interesting parts of the book for me was learning about the elderly Hungarians, being apart of a culture that I'm unfamiliar with. However, I found that most of the book (that I read) didn't really concentrate on this at all. Rather, it just discussed Marina's worries about being an outsider, which although is understandable, it was a bit excessive, and her obsession with Simon Flowers, a senior at her boarding school. Laura just worries about her affair with the local doctor, and occasionally about her husband returning.
For those reasons, I decided to DNF this book. I might return to it in future, seeing as it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. But for now, there are better books on my shelf that I would rather be reading.
August 31, 2021
I enjoyed this novel quite a bit. I found the plotline that focused on Marina pretty hard hitting - as someone who has had quite low self esteem and an unhealthy dose of self hatred as a teen (which mostly stemmed from feeling lonely / unaccepted, having unfashionable physical features and having an insane amount of performance pressure from my family - just like her), it felt like a punch in my gut... it felt so real, even though I had other ways of coping back then. But I can definitely see such a self-hating, vulnerable teenager get into such destructive relationships to feel loved.
I found the plotline about her mother a little bit of an afterthought... or at least not as psychologically complex - and, more importantly, unfinished (it was not even the "open ending that evokes contemplation" type of ending).
I cannot go past the Hungarian element as a true and true, born and raised Hungarian. It was a bit hit and miss for me. I did not feel the characters to be quintessentially Hungarian - and I felt that the author was trying a littlr bit too hard to evoke that feeling... but in the end, there was just too much talk about food. Don't get me wrong, we Hungarians love our food, but we have a lot more to us than our snacks, those are not the only things making us different.
Also, at times, the structure was confusing - in quite a few occasions, within the same chapter, the POV was jumping between Marina and Laura without ANY system to it.
I found the plotline about her mother a little bit of an afterthought... or at least not as psychologically complex - and, more importantly, unfinished (it was not even the "open ending that evokes contemplation" type of ending).
I cannot go past the Hungarian element as a true and true, born and raised Hungarian. It was a bit hit and miss for me. I did not feel the characters to be quintessentially Hungarian - and I felt that the author was trying a littlr bit too hard to evoke that feeling... but in the end, there was just too much talk about food. Don't get me wrong, we Hungarians love our food, but we have a lot more to us than our snacks, those are not the only things making us different.
Also, at times, the structure was confusing - in quite a few occasions, within the same chapter, the POV was jumping between Marina and Laura without ANY system to it.
September 2, 2013
Charlotte Mendelson's latest novel after a long break is almost an anthology of elements from the previous 3. There is a cast of women of different ages, with problems that interconnect in ways they are often unaware of. There is a dirty-minded middle-aged respected man seeking to exploit the youngest female. There is an old secret about to the revealed. And the main characters are all part of a minority group, which has pretty much assimilated in to the English middle-class, but they still are haunted by insecurities about identity and acceptance. In this case, it's a family of old Hungarian refugees, similar to the author's own background.
All the action occurs in a firmly middle-class world, and quite a lot of it is placed at a posh boarding school. So best avoid if you have ideological objections to fiction that takes that as its frame. But you'd be missing out on some fine comedy and engaging characterisation, and it's as well-paced and structured as her other work. The only quibbles are that there are a few anachronistic references for a story that's supposed to be set in 1989 (these are going to be fixed in later editions, apparently), and also the attempted-sex scene in chapter 37 seems to me to be anatomically infeasible, unless the car has an unusual design.
All the action occurs in a firmly middle-class world, and quite a lot of it is placed at a posh boarding school. So best avoid if you have ideological objections to fiction that takes that as its frame. But you'd be missing out on some fine comedy and engaging characterisation, and it's as well-paced and structured as her other work. The only quibbles are that there are a few anachronistic references for a story that's supposed to be set in 1989 (these are going to be fixed in later editions, apparently), and also the attempted-sex scene in chapter 37 seems to me to be anatomically infeasible, unless the car has an unusual design.
August 18, 2013
I deliberately waited a few days to post this review to see if I was being too tough on this book. Unfortunately I had to check my Kindle to recall the title and can't remember many of the characters' names. This is on the Booker longlist. Maybe, once again, it's just me.
It fulfils the brief: lower-class immigrants in London, private school in England, coming-of-age story and middle-age story intertwined, thoughtful musings in finding identity that many of us who have lived in the UK and were born elsewhere have struggled with. It peppers in references to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Bayswater in the late 1980s. It questions the British class system and why both children and adults bully each other. It touches on inappropriate adult/child relationships. But it felt as if Mendelson was not really comfortable with either point of view, as neither felt fully developed. The three Hungarian great-auntie characters are delightful and seems far more alive than either of the two protagonists.The plot twist at the end seemed contrived and coincidental. I'm giving it three stars because again, maybe it's me. The Booker folks liked it, right?
It fulfils the brief: lower-class immigrants in London, private school in England, coming-of-age story and middle-age story intertwined, thoughtful musings in finding identity that many of us who have lived in the UK and were born elsewhere have struggled with. It peppers in references to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Bayswater in the late 1980s. It questions the British class system and why both children and adults bully each other. It touches on inappropriate adult/child relationships. But it felt as if Mendelson was not really comfortable with either point of view, as neither felt fully developed. The three Hungarian great-auntie characters are delightful and seems far more alive than either of the two protagonists.The plot twist at the end seemed contrived and coincidental. I'm giving it three stars because again, maybe it's me. The Booker folks liked it, right?
January 8, 2017
As my first read of 2017, this did not inspire confidence in the year ahead! I can't understand how it made the cut for the Man Booker longlist in 2013.
Almost English tells the story of Laura and her daughter Marina who live with their Hungarian relatives in west London. The book focuses on their lives whilst Marina is attending a traditional English boarding school.
This book was disappointing, poorly executed and lacked character development. The main characters were frustrating and boring, and the 'plot' was predictable and lacked depth. Not to mention that the culture and background of the Hungarian relatives wasn't explored in depth at all! I would have loved to have learned more.
The characters' lack of ability to make decisions or speak to each other was so frustrating I nearly threw the book across the room.
I think this book had potential but was poorly executed and would not recommend.
Almost English tells the story of Laura and her daughter Marina who live with their Hungarian relatives in west London. The book focuses on their lives whilst Marina is attending a traditional English boarding school.
This book was disappointing, poorly executed and lacked character development. The main characters were frustrating and boring, and the 'plot' was predictable and lacked depth. Not to mention that the culture and background of the Hungarian relatives wasn't explored in depth at all! I would have loved to have learned more.
The characters' lack of ability to make decisions or speak to each other was so frustrating I nearly threw the book across the room.
I think this book had potential but was poorly executed and would not recommend.
November 3, 2014
I think I have to learn a lesson from this. Just because this was alongside Richard Yates' 'A Good School' on the counter at Foyles, doesn't mean there's any kind of relationship between the two books, doesn't mean that Foyles isn't capable of peddling trite, inconclusive one dimensionalia. I think that this was poor, Foyles knows it, you know it....sadly now I know it.
What the fuck do you mean, 'Booker prize listed' in 2013 ?!?
What the fuck do you mean, 'Booker prize listed' in 2013 ?!?
May 14, 2017
I do not understand the bad reviews about this work of fiction. I think it is an excellent piece of work. A family torn between its lost past and its uncertain future and in the midst of this storm is a girl trying to find her niche. A must read.....it's funny at times......with dark undertones......white mixing with black.
September 14, 2024
Thanks to NetGalley who gave me this book to read and review.
I found myself zoning out with listening to this book. I found the storyline on discovering her Hungarian heritage didn’t feel very well flushed out and the characters didn’t have much depth. The mother daughter relationship started out interesting but devolved as the book went along. Overall it had some funny bits but I also found it quite cringe. It’s the kind of book I would download on libby when I had nothing to listen to.
I found myself zoning out with listening to this book. I found the storyline on discovering her Hungarian heritage didn’t feel very well flushed out and the characters didn’t have much depth. The mother daughter relationship started out interesting but devolved as the book went along. Overall it had some funny bits but I also found it quite cringe. It’s the kind of book I would download on libby when I had nothing to listen to.
February 10, 2015
I made it! I suffered through this book! Yeah! I am actually quite proud of myself.
I am a native Hungarian and I found this book incredibly irritating.
The old Hungarian ladies are rather the subject of ridicule than anything else. I am terribly sorry but the accent is one thing, incorrect use of terms is another. The accent usually fades away a bit with the years spent in the native environment but it still remains. I get it. Each time I read Vonderful, vat a pity made me angry. It was funny to read it the first time but repeating them over and over again? I can perfectly hear an accent without having read it.
However, the grammatical mistakes made absolute no sense! I rather found them offensive.
We do not pick up English pleasantries even after living here for 50 years… I will never start saying wicked, splendid, brilliant, how kind, so lovely etc. even after a million year, I am sorry. So this was just wrong. I have to assume that the writer has absolutely no idea of a real Hungarian character. I could mention so many other things which were simply untrue.
Shall I start with the main character’s name? Needless to say Marina is not a Hungarian name. Marinaka as a diminutive form of it, simply incorrect. Even if it was a Hungarian name (which is not) the nick name of it would be Marinka or Marínácska. How can you get your main character’s name wrong in a novel? I have the feeling that the writer did not consult with any native speakers at any point of writing this book. I have checked the acknowledgements and this is the conclusion I arrived at. No Hungarian names listed…
All the Hungarian references are full of mistakes. Grammatical and spelling mistakes. Minden jol – simply does not mean anything. “Minden jót!” means all the best, not very good…Kavechka…does not exist. (Kávécska maybe...not often used though.) Furthermore, this is something annoyingly basic that “ch” in Hungarian is actually written as “cs”.
Accents are either put at the wrong place or simply missing.
Nadgyon – Incorrectly spelled. I have to assume that she did not look these words up even in Google as the spelling mistakes would have come up immediately.
No Hungarian speaks Russian or Czech just for the sake of it. So assuming that the old ladies were reading in those languages are simply stereotypical.
She even gets the foods wrong. This was the point when I almost tear the book apart. She is mixing foods from all over Eastern Europe. I found references of foods from Serbia, Czech Republic, Russia etc. And I could just go on and on and on…
…but I won’t! Enough of the Hungarian part which is clearly sensitive for me. These two women…Marina and Laura are so miserable and beyond help. After a while I have just lost any remaining feeling of sympathy and I have found them just simply annoying beyond words can describe. Sadly the two character does not improve at all. No final conclusion or twist, absolutely nothing.
It is not worth reading. Very poor work.
I am a native Hungarian and I found this book incredibly irritating.
The old Hungarian ladies are rather the subject of ridicule than anything else. I am terribly sorry but the accent is one thing, incorrect use of terms is another. The accent usually fades away a bit with the years spent in the native environment but it still remains. I get it. Each time I read Vonderful, vat a pity made me angry. It was funny to read it the first time but repeating them over and over again? I can perfectly hear an accent without having read it.
However, the grammatical mistakes made absolute no sense! I rather found them offensive.
We do not pick up English pleasantries even after living here for 50 years… I will never start saying wicked, splendid, brilliant, how kind, so lovely etc. even after a million year, I am sorry. So this was just wrong. I have to assume that the writer has absolutely no idea of a real Hungarian character. I could mention so many other things which were simply untrue.
Shall I start with the main character’s name? Needless to say Marina is not a Hungarian name. Marinaka as a diminutive form of it, simply incorrect. Even if it was a Hungarian name (which is not) the nick name of it would be Marinka or Marínácska. How can you get your main character’s name wrong in a novel? I have the feeling that the writer did not consult with any native speakers at any point of writing this book. I have checked the acknowledgements and this is the conclusion I arrived at. No Hungarian names listed…
All the Hungarian references are full of mistakes. Grammatical and spelling mistakes. Minden jol – simply does not mean anything. “Minden jót!” means all the best, not very good…Kavechka…does not exist. (Kávécska maybe...not often used though.) Furthermore, this is something annoyingly basic that “ch” in Hungarian is actually written as “cs”.
Accents are either put at the wrong place or simply missing.
Nadgyon – Incorrectly spelled. I have to assume that she did not look these words up even in Google as the spelling mistakes would have come up immediately.
No Hungarian speaks Russian or Czech just for the sake of it. So assuming that the old ladies were reading in those languages are simply stereotypical.
She even gets the foods wrong. This was the point when I almost tear the book apart. She is mixing foods from all over Eastern Europe. I found references of foods from Serbia, Czech Republic, Russia etc. And I could just go on and on and on…
…but I won’t! Enough of the Hungarian part which is clearly sensitive for me. These two women…Marina and Laura are so miserable and beyond help. After a while I have just lost any remaining feeling of sympathy and I have found them just simply annoying beyond words can describe. Sadly the two character does not improve at all. No final conclusion or twist, absolutely nothing.
It is not worth reading. Very poor work.
March 23, 2020
This wasn't my bag. It's well written, but depicts a selection of thoroughly horrible characters and just yuck! And I really, really hope she is not trying to suggest that 'completely' English is the Viney family. But this is a very London and home counties rich snobs story, with lots of teenagers, so I guess I was on to a looser from the word go.
I can't rememeber why I wanted to read this. Did someone recommend it? The Almost English factor is that teenager Marina is half Hungarian, and lives with her English mother and three elderly Hungarian relatives in a London flat. So there's potential. Could have found out all sorts about Hungarian culture and madness. There's a bit but most of it focuses on the mother's anxiety and love affairs, and the daughter's anxiety and trying to figure herself out in her teens. They are in pretty horrible circumstances - three elderly women, the mother and the daughter live in a two bed flat. Marina has a room created out of the end of the coridoor and the mother just sleeps on the sofa. This has been the status quo for the last 15 years, ever since the father walked out on them. Here's the thing that got me. The daughter is sent to private school. Seriously, get your priorities straight! But it's all snobbishness that this is the only way anyone could get an education. This book charts Marina going to a different private school, Combe Abbey, for her A levels, and really not fitting it - because she's almost English apparently, but I'm English and quite frankly all the characters could come from the planet Zog for me. She ends up going out with a horrible lad whose family are rich, rich, and stare down their noses at people and make them feel small with cutting comments. Because apparently they're superior. Except the father likes to seduce school girls in his car.
Got through it to the end, mostly as I was a bit curious as to what was going to happen with the father plot line, but this isn't something I'd want to keep and I don't think I'd be inclined to try any of her other books.
I can't rememeber why I wanted to read this. Did someone recommend it? The Almost English factor is that teenager Marina is half Hungarian, and lives with her English mother and three elderly Hungarian relatives in a London flat. So there's potential. Could have found out all sorts about Hungarian culture and madness. There's a bit but most of it focuses on the mother's anxiety and love affairs, and the daughter's anxiety and trying to figure herself out in her teens. They are in pretty horrible circumstances - three elderly women, the mother and the daughter live in a two bed flat. Marina has a room created out of the end of the coridoor and the mother just sleeps on the sofa. This has been the status quo for the last 15 years, ever since the father walked out on them. Here's the thing that got me. The daughter is sent to private school. Seriously, get your priorities straight! But it's all snobbishness that this is the only way anyone could get an education. This book charts Marina going to a different private school, Combe Abbey, for her A levels, and really not fitting it - because she's almost English apparently, but I'm English and quite frankly all the characters could come from the planet Zog for me. She ends up going out with a horrible lad whose family are rich, rich, and stare down their noses at people and make them feel small with cutting comments. Because apparently they're superior. Except the father likes to seduce school girls in his car.
Got through it to the end, mostly as I was a bit curious as to what was going to happen with the father plot line, but this isn't something I'd want to keep and I don't think I'd be inclined to try any of her other books.
February 9, 2014
For some reason (possibly the 'Longlisted for Booker' epithet on the cover), I thought this book would be a really good read. Unfortunately, I found it thoroughly mediocre. Sometimes the writing surprised me with similies and comparative style that reminded me of Kiran Desai. But as far as the actual plot is concerned, it was dreadfully boring and not very original at all. A teenager feeling out of place in a not so normal family? It's done to death and the end was pathetically ordinary- I wanted, nay I needed something more conclusive to end this book on a good note. Virtually everything that happened up to the end could have been ended five chapters ago, even though the author seemed to urge us to stick to the end because something radical would happen- like maybe Laura would properly stand up for her daughter. Even when her daughter streaks naked through a hall full of people, she says 'I shouldn't laugh' or something like that. What? Why would you laugh? Only when a person, especially a person as serious and adult-like as Marina, does something like that, you have to know something is awfully wrong with her. I also don't like how she keeps asking Marina what's wrong and then immediately gets distracted about it. Show me one mother who knows something is fishy and still doesn't pursue the subject.
August 30, 2013
I think that Mendelson might well be one of the best contemporary British authors and she is very deft at writing about characters who are conflicted about their British/Englishness and the mismatch that occurs between immigrant families (in this case Hungarian) and British society. There is a truly excruciating (but fantastic) set-piece about halfway through where Marina, the young protagonist, goes to visit her boyfriend's family - she's from London, her family is entirely the Hungarian aunts and her mother and she is so incredibly out of place in this vast country house where everyone can trace their lineage back generations, and she has no idea how to behave. Even if it weren't for her - as she sees it - embarrassing "not Britishness", the class demarcation would have done her in anyway. There are a few too many events in the second half of the novel, but overall it is exceptionally good.
February 18, 2016
This is the kind of book you read "cringing" all the way. I had to finish it to make sure the teenager didn't do something really stupid. Alas, she did. The author is very good at painting what seems an authenic picture of the Hungarian grandmothers and the Hungarian culture. She also captures the angst of being a teenager well, albiet a bit on the extreme side. A light read, irritating at times.
February 25, 2016
I loved the set-up - the claustrophobic London flat, the elderly Hungarian aunties, the neurotic Laura, and Marina's attempt to escape to the awful second-rate boarding school. I loved the Hungarian language, I admired the writing and I enjoyed the comedy. I couldn't love the book though - Marina and Laura are too enormously irritating, despite the cleverness in the author's wry and light-footed descriptions of their idiotic behaviour.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 251 reviews