The Exhibitionist
Praise for The exhibitionist
‘Sharp and sad, witty and hopeful, as with all Mendelson’s work, The Exhibitionist is both forensically aware of all the flaws of humanity but also able to be forgiving and compassionate’
- Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of Everyone Is Still Alive
‘Like Katherine Heiny and Maria Semple, Mendelson is skilled at rendering the grotesque fascinating. This book would be disturbing, is disturbing , especially on the subject of masculine control, but it is also funny; so funny’
- THE I PAPER
‘Exceptional’
- WOMAN & HOME
‘A welcome return for the chronicler of family secrets, with a tale of art, ego and marriage’
- GUARDIAN
‘Mendelson's great success is to make the endless sacrifices, self-conscious denials and forbidden emotions of the Hanrahans heartbreakingly relatable . . . The Exhibitionist is an undeniable success’
- LITERARY REVIEW
'Charlotte Mendelson’s furiously funny fifth novel takes the idea of a toxic family drama and runs wild with it. Over the course of one tempestuous weekend, the unhappy Hanrahans fall apart, their story playing out with a devastating, exuberant glee. .. The cause of all the misery is marvellously monstrous failing artist Ray Hanrahan, who is about to stage the exhibition that will make or break his career. … Honest and frenetically paced, this is a painfully funny look at art, ambition and damaging family dynamics'
- SUNDAY EXPRESS
'A truly wonderful novel, and a funny and wise one, too; the individual components sparkle, the whole movement beguiles’ Sunjeev Sahota, author of 2021 Man Booker-longlisted The China Room
‘People aren’t supposed to write novels like this one any more: savagely clever books set in large, rambling, arty London houses and concerned almost exclusively with the domestic strifes, concerns and screw-ups of the white middle classes. Well, thank God they do, particularly when they are as bleakly and relentlessly entertaining a writer as Charlotte Mendelson. She has bagged a Women’s Prize Longlisting with this… delicious piquant comedy of manners, and Mendelson’s serrated prose will have you wincing at every word’
- DAILY MAIL
‘A compulsive distillation of artistic ego, midlife passion and family dysfunction. It’s set over a single weekend, as folk gather to toast the once famous and still monstrously controlling painter Ray Hanrahan at his comeback exhibition. Among them are his grown children and his downtrodden wife, Lucia, whose own long-neglected artistic career threatens finally to soar. The zestfully crafted drama that follows is hilarious, sexy and thoughtful’
- MAIL ON SUNDAY
'A vivid family portrait…A deluded patriarch sits at the centre of this deliciously evocative novel laced with sex and art’
- Lucy Scholes, FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Charlotte Mendelson’s family dramas — particularly the sharply funny Daughters of Jerusalem (2003) — are almost Shakespearean in their twists and revelations. Her latest is no exception, and the judges of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction agree: they placed it on their longlist before it hit the shelves… With an electrifying narrative full of life’s messiness, this is a real contender for the Women’s Prize’
- Laura Hackett, SUNDAY TIMES
‘Mendelson’s heady present-tense narration mingles eroticism, absurdity and pathos, capturing the intensity of illicit love, the corrosiveness of bullying, the bottomlessness of narcissism'
- Madeleine Feeny, TELEGRAPH
‘It’s a modern mystery why Charlotte Mendelson, one of the funniest writers in Britain, isn’t a bestseller’
- John Self, THE OBSERVER
‘Mendelson is a master at family drama, and plots don’t get much more dramatic than this … Exhilarating’
- Susie Mesure, THE TIMES
‘A treat . . . Excoriating observation of the art world, crazy toxic family intrigues, wit, wisdom and brilliant writing’
- Muriel Gray
‘I don't think I've ever read anything that is simultaneously so elegant and so propulsive - every single sentence Charlotte Mendelson writes is arrestingly powerful. I think this book is beautiful, but it's also funny, furious, sexy, blissfully hot and cold and wild in its rage’
- Daisy Buchanan, author of Insatiable
‘Soul-scouringly good’ Nigella Lawson
‘A delicious, heartbreaking family snapshot about thwarted ambition, misplaced loyalty and good and bad love. Secrets abound. Fabulously written and utterly compelling’
- Marian Keyes, bestselling author of Grown-Ups
‘It takes the most ferocious intelligence, skill, and a deep reservoir of sadness to write a novel as funny as this. I adored it’
- Meg Mason, bestselling author of Sorrow & Bliss
'In The Exhibitionist Mendelson brings a forensic eye to family dynamics, laying bare the agonies of rage, frustration and longing that lie just beneath the surface of domestic life. The result is a devastating treat of a novel: funny, furious, dark and delicious’
- Sarah Waters, bestselling author of Fingersmith