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Marrying Out
‘Several kisses, each a suction-pad of love, were plonked over my face. Thrusting me back to arm’s length again she scrutinized me, staring into my very soul. How she loved us! Her eyes brimmed with tears, as if such love was too much to ask a human being to bear . . .’
It is a Saturday afternoon in the 1950s, and Harold Carlton (lightly disguised as Howard Conway) is being given a characteristic welcome by his grandmother at the door of her mansion flat just off London’s Edgware Road. Like everything about Grandma – her food, her décor, her make-up, her fears, her joys, her sorrows – it’s excessive, overwhelming. She is the monstrous yet entirely believable figure who dominates this darkly comic story of a Jewish family’s rise and fall, as seen through the eyes of a teenage boy who has something of Adrian Mole about him – for Howard has discovered Freud.
You don’t have to be Jewish to recognize the characters in this dysfunctional family – Howard’s dyspeptic and dominating father, grimly running his father-in-law’s handbag factory; his delightful but dissatisfied mother, trapped (initially anyway) in an unsatisfactory marriage; Howard’s brother and sister, who provide a kind of background chorus; lovable, easy-going Grandad, with his surprise secret life; and Grandma herself, the arch manipulator and expert in emotional blackmail, determined to foil her youngest son’s plans to marry a shiksa – a non-Jewish girl – by shipping him off to join his brother in New York.
When the two brothers return full of New World entrepreneurial spirit it all rebounds, of course, in an awful yet irresistibly hilarious way. Though light-heartedly written, Marrying Out is a brilliantly observed study of family dynamics, and of a certain kind of Jewish life in 1950s North London.
‘I loved this book so much that I will be pressing it into the hands of family and friends for a long time to come. ’ Amanda Craig, Jewish Chronicle
‘Sunday Times Culture Magazine 2001’ 100 Best Books of the Year
It is a Saturday afternoon in the 1950s, and Harold Carlton (lightly disguised as Howard Conway) is being given a characteristic welcome by his grandmother at the door of her mansion flat just off London’s Edgware Road. Like everything about Grandma – her food, her décor, her make-up, her fears, her joys, her sorrows – it’s excessive, overwhelming. She is the monstrous yet entirely believable figure who dominates this darkly comic story of a Jewish family’s rise and fall, as seen through the eyes of a teenage boy who has something of Adrian Mole about him – for Howard has discovered Freud.
You don’t have to be Jewish to recognize the characters in this dysfunctional family – Howard’s dyspeptic and dominating father, grimly running his father-in-law’s handbag factory; his delightful but dissatisfied mother, trapped (initially anyway) in an unsatisfactory marriage; Howard’s brother and sister, who provide a kind of background chorus; lovable, easy-going Grandad, with his surprise secret life; and Grandma herself, the arch manipulator and expert in emotional blackmail, determined to foil her youngest son’s plans to marry a shiksa – a non-Jewish girl – by shipping him off to join his brother in New York.
When the two brothers return full of New World entrepreneurial spirit it all rebounds, of course, in an awful yet irresistibly hilarious way. Though light-heartedly written, Marrying Out is a brilliantly observed study of family dynamics, and of a certain kind of Jewish life in 1950s North London.
‘I loved this book so much that I will be pressing it into the hands of family and friends for a long time to come. ’ Amanda Craig, Jewish Chronicle
‘Sunday Times Culture Magazine 2001’ 100 Best Books of the Year
285 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2014
20 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 21, 2020
Slightly Foxed, the wonderful literary quarterly, produces its own elegant editions (about the size and shape of the older Everyman Library books) of selected titles the editors think should be saved for a new generation of readers.
Marrying Out was originally published in 2001 as The Handsomest Sons in the World. It is the story of 'Howard Conway' - the author's pseudonym for himself - a Jewish boy growing up in Willesden in the 1950s. He struggles with the transition to young adulthood, his longing to escape from a Jewishness he finds oppressive, and which his father and grandfather dismiss as 'a lot of baloney', and his desire to become an artist. The road to adulthood includes becoming the unwilling custodian of many of the family secrets that were simply never spoken about...
His closely observed description of his ghastly dysfunctional family is as laugh-out-loud funny as it is heart-breaking. We recognise our own adolescent agonies at the same time as we quietly give thanks that our own family wasn't that bad.
I loved this book. As a goy living in Edmonton, a few years younger than Harold Carlton, I had numbers of Jewish friends who may well have suffered some of the angst he did. His memoir helps me to understand them better, as well as some of the pangs of my own childhood back in those days of beginning to emerge from post-WW2 austerity.
Marrying Out was originally published in 2001 as The Handsomest Sons in the World. It is the story of 'Howard Conway' - the author's pseudonym for himself - a Jewish boy growing up in Willesden in the 1950s. He struggles with the transition to young adulthood, his longing to escape from a Jewishness he finds oppressive, and which his father and grandfather dismiss as 'a lot of baloney', and his desire to become an artist. The road to adulthood includes becoming the unwilling custodian of many of the family secrets that were simply never spoken about...
His closely observed description of his ghastly dysfunctional family is as laugh-out-loud funny as it is heart-breaking. We recognise our own adolescent agonies at the same time as we quietly give thanks that our own family wasn't that bad.
I loved this book. As a goy living in Edmonton, a few years younger than Harold Carlton, I had numbers of Jewish friends who may well have suffered some of the angst he did. His memoir helps me to understand them better, as well as some of the pangs of my own childhood back in those days of beginning to emerge from post-WW2 austerity.
May 8, 2021
Harold Carlton's Marrying Out is a wonderful memoir and tragicomedy.
The story is narrated from the perspective of the author as a 12-year old boy. Under the name of "Howard Conway", we learn about his family and his upbringing. The family is filled with eccentric characters: his angry father, who works in the family handbag business and is frequently afflicted by debilitating ulcers and rages; his suffering maternal grandfather, who is often ambivalent towards family affairs but is tired of his wife's antics; his majestic yet scary grandmother, always covered in white cakey makeup and known to be a drama queen. Howard is closest to his mother, a beautiful woman who is devoted to her children but otherwise dissatisfied at home, having been married off too young to prevent trouble for the family.
Despite the love and attention he receives from his mother, Howard finds life in his home to be dull. He hates everything about his father and, along with his two siblings, often wonders why his mother has settled for someone so unworthy. It is during their weekly meals at their grandparents' home that excitement and action unfold. Howard likes his grandfather, often going with him on errands and to the cinema. He loves his grandmother too, and is willing to forgive her quirky remarks - such as when she shouts "Don't forget to keep yer bowels open!" as he's crossing a busy street. The one thing he resents about his grandmother is how much she seems to prefer her two sons over his own mother.
After spending some time in America, Howard's two beloved uncles, Frankie and Jack, come back with a bold ambition: they will create a successful American restaurant chain, the first of its kind in the UK. Grandma is proud, convincing her husband to close the family handbag business and invest in their sons' idea. Howard's father is invited to invest as well but, afraid of the risk involved, he declines. His decision upsets the entire family, and it is this unfortunate event that starts the family's unraveling. Of course, it isn’t until Uncle Jack decides to marry out of the family - to a non-Jewish girl - that all hell breaks loose.
Although the memoir has many interesting characters, it is Grandma that truly stands out. She is at the center of the most tragic and comedic scenes, where she adds so much personality that the whole scene around her seems to be bursting at the seams. Everything she does seems to be exaggerated - her makeup, her fantastic dishes that take three days to prepare, her anticipatory mourning as Uncle Jack takes a flight to America, her disappointment when Uncle Jack decides to marry Christine. No moment encapsulates her personality better than when Grandpa has a heart attack; "'Max! MAX!' she yells into his face. 'Don’t leave me, Max. DON’T LEAVE ME!' Later, Grandpa swears he died, but, hearing her screams, didn’t dare continue his journey to the other side." When, at the end, Howard learns secrets about the family, we realize just how tragic Grandma's life had really been and we feel a sense of immense sympathy for her.
An important theme throughout the memoir is the family's Jewish identity. The family does not consider themselves to be religious Jews, but they are Jews in the blood. They don't follow a kosher diet, but their Jewishness is a matter of great importance to them as a collective unit - and it is this identity that adds intensity to the story.
Overall, this is a fantastic memoir; it is beautifully written, with wonderful character development and a keen sense of observation. It often reads more like a novel - perhaps because Carlton deliberately chose to write it under the guise of a different name. As I finished the book, I thought back to Leo Tolstoy's famous quote in Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"; this is surely one of the funniest books ever written about an unhappy family.
The story is narrated from the perspective of the author as a 12-year old boy. Under the name of "Howard Conway", we learn about his family and his upbringing. The family is filled with eccentric characters: his angry father, who works in the family handbag business and is frequently afflicted by debilitating ulcers and rages; his suffering maternal grandfather, who is often ambivalent towards family affairs but is tired of his wife's antics; his majestic yet scary grandmother, always covered in white cakey makeup and known to be a drama queen. Howard is closest to his mother, a beautiful woman who is devoted to her children but otherwise dissatisfied at home, having been married off too young to prevent trouble for the family.
Despite the love and attention he receives from his mother, Howard finds life in his home to be dull. He hates everything about his father and, along with his two siblings, often wonders why his mother has settled for someone so unworthy. It is during their weekly meals at their grandparents' home that excitement and action unfold. Howard likes his grandfather, often going with him on errands and to the cinema. He loves his grandmother too, and is willing to forgive her quirky remarks - such as when she shouts "Don't forget to keep yer bowels open!" as he's crossing a busy street. The one thing he resents about his grandmother is how much she seems to prefer her two sons over his own mother.
After spending some time in America, Howard's two beloved uncles, Frankie and Jack, come back with a bold ambition: they will create a successful American restaurant chain, the first of its kind in the UK. Grandma is proud, convincing her husband to close the family handbag business and invest in their sons' idea. Howard's father is invited to invest as well but, afraid of the risk involved, he declines. His decision upsets the entire family, and it is this unfortunate event that starts the family's unraveling. Of course, it isn’t until Uncle Jack decides to marry out of the family - to a non-Jewish girl - that all hell breaks loose.
Although the memoir has many interesting characters, it is Grandma that truly stands out. She is at the center of the most tragic and comedic scenes, where she adds so much personality that the whole scene around her seems to be bursting at the seams. Everything she does seems to be exaggerated - her makeup, her fantastic dishes that take three days to prepare, her anticipatory mourning as Uncle Jack takes a flight to America, her disappointment when Uncle Jack decides to marry Christine. No moment encapsulates her personality better than when Grandpa has a heart attack; "'Max! MAX!' she yells into his face. 'Don’t leave me, Max. DON’T LEAVE ME!' Later, Grandpa swears he died, but, hearing her screams, didn’t dare continue his journey to the other side." When, at the end, Howard learns secrets about the family, we realize just how tragic Grandma's life had really been and we feel a sense of immense sympathy for her.
An important theme throughout the memoir is the family's Jewish identity. The family does not consider themselves to be religious Jews, but they are Jews in the blood. They don't follow a kosher diet, but their Jewishness is a matter of great importance to them as a collective unit - and it is this identity that adds intensity to the story.
Overall, this is a fantastic memoir; it is beautifully written, with wonderful character development and a keen sense of observation. It often reads more like a novel - perhaps because Carlton deliberately chose to write it under the guise of a different name. As I finished the book, I thought back to Leo Tolstoy's famous quote in Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"; this is surely one of the funniest books ever written about an unhappy family.
April 8, 2021
This is the same book as The Handsomest Sons in the World.
November 28, 2014
Harold Carlton wrote this memoir about Howard Carter. Choosing another name may have made it easier to write. He paints a scene and draws characters well. Why wouldn't he? He was trained as an artist. I'm curious now to see some of his album covers, posters, etc. His ending made me smile, but I can't say why without giving something away. That said, I don't want anyone thinking this is an amusing ending.
November 24, 2016
Coming of age, the Jewish way! This memoir almost reads like satire, a comedy of manners and yet this Jewish family is so familiar on so many levels that it isn't! The eccentricities, contradictions and emotional incontinence were real page turners and sections were truly laugh out loud. Book hits sour notes towards the end as the family unravels and the real world hijacks the rule of grandma.
December 1, 2014
Priceless. We all know families like this. The author's candour is commendable.
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February 28, 2015Slightly Foxed Edition.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews