I seem to drawn to novels that centre around flawed characters at the moment. And there are plenty of them in The Exhibitionist. We meet the Hanrahan family: Ray, Lucia and their three children. Ray and Lucia are artists, live in North London and spend their days walking a tightrope of each other's emotions.

Ray is a truly visceral character - I get that he was meant to be awful and cause a reaction but every time he was on the page, I just didn't want to read more about him. He is the worst kind of pathetic, self involved man and sadly, Lucia spends too much of her life pandering to that, which also didn't appeal to me.

As this dynamic was there from the offset - I realised this was going to skew the read for me. I sadly couldn't connect with the characters.

Ray aside, I did enjoy the way this book is written and understand the juicy delve into a dysfunctional family is a story lots of people love, sadly this family just wasn't doing it for me.

Apologies but this book did not really work for me

I found the milieu involved (upper middle class, North London, high end arts prizes) far from conducive to my empathy for the characters (and to be honest their actions and words to little to compensate in this regard – a simultaneously pitiful but privileged family (at least as I subjectively viewed them) is not a great combination.

The book takes place over a long weekend (Friday-Sunday) in February 2010 and is about the Hanrahan family – the opening “Tolstoy was an idiot” sets us up that this is effectively a story about an unusual unhappy family who pretend (for the sake of the deluded and badly-read patriarch) to be happy.

Ray is a one-time famous, now largely overlooked conceptual artist. He lives in a large crumbling and rambling-gardened North London home which he appropriated from his parents (to the unspoken chagrin of his brother and his wife),with his first wife living in a side part of the house, his second wife Lucia (the central character of the novel – more later) and his “Victorian-spinster” 30 plus oldest daughter Leah (devoted to his every whim), and with his stepson (Lucia’s son) Patrick living in a caravan in the garden as his odd job man (and suffering it seems from extreme nerves if not more serious mental conditions).

His youngest daughter Jess has managed to leave home – and teaches in Edinburgh, where she is in a close relationship with a fellow teacher Martyn (a relationship she is currently looking to break off with the added complication that she may be pregnant) – Martyn is obsessed with Ray and desperate to move into his house with Jess.

The core of the novel is that while Ray’s star is fading, Lucia’s is rising – something the ridiculously egocentric and narcissistic Ray regards as both entirely correlated and casual and as a complete betrayal by Lucia. The book opens with her realising an even bigger break through is likely due to a call from her agent – something she intuitively panics about it due to what she knows will be its impact on Ray, particuarly on this weekend of all weekends, when in a desperate last attempt to resurrect his career Ray and Leah have planned and funded a viewing of his latest art (art which no one seems to have seen – even Leah).

As the family are all summoned to help – their tensions play out with the additional complication a clandestine nascent affair Lucia is having with a well-known Midlands constituency representing buy local living female Hindi Labour MP and (just to add to the melodrama) realisations occurring about a past affair that Ray had (Ray’s ex-wife and the subject of his affair of course naturally being invited to the opening).

While I felt that the portrayal of emotional abuse by the family patriarch was partly convincing at least as it applied to say 1-2 of the family members, it was I believe taken too far when applying to not just a second wife and a daughter, but also a step son, a wanabee son-in-law and a brother - particularly when combined with a portrayal of the patriarch as a spoilt child with a complete absence of charisma and with a long faded talent..

I would say that the title is very clever and the author does do a nice line in metaphors – as the family tiptoe around Ray’s inflated self-worth and ridiculous self-delusions for example we are told “It’s like playing Jenga: any threat to his self-esteem, a tiny wobble and the whole thing comes crashing onto your knuckles”. I

Overall not the book for me. Sorry.

Although I can appreciate that this book is well written, the writing style just wasn’t suited for me. I found the flipping between characters confusing and didn’t connect with any of them. A well crafted novel but unfortunately not my cup of tea.

The Hanrahan family are being forced to gather for a weekend to soothe the ego of their father Ray as he prepares for a new exhibition of his work. His wife Lucia is an artist too but over the years she has played down her own hard work and success to placate Ray. The eldest daughter Leah always takes Ray’s side even if means her sister Jess is left on the outside of the family and there’s sensitive Patrick who can’t quite find his place in the world.

I read this masterpiece of a dysfunctional family in one go. I loved the style of the writing and the fact that Ray is a glorious monster. I just wanted to shake Lucia to make her see sense. Wonderfully drawn characters that draw you into their toxic world. I’d highly recommend this book.

I thought that this had all the makings of a good plot. However, Ray was such an unlikable, bullying egotist, that I felt it undermined the credibility of the other characters, His daughter Leah, and chief defender of her father occupied an unrealistic role I felt as a women of today. It is non the less a well written beautifully, crafted book.

In 'The Exhibitionist', Charlotte Mendelson offers an interesting and increasingly compelling portrait of a dysfunctional bohemian family. The action of the novel takes place over a weekend in which the Hanrahan family is preparing for the opening of Ray Hanrahan's first exhibition in many years. Ray was once a celebrated artist but his sculptor wife Lucia has started to eclipse him, a source of significant tension. Their children have different attitudes: Leah, who has never left home, is fiercely loyal to Ray; her sister Jess has escaped to Edinburgh to work as a teacher, but Jess's partner Martyn longs to ingratiate himself with Ray; meanwhile, Ray uses his stepson Patrick as a convenient handyman but otherwise has little regard for him. The novel also explores Ray and Lucia's extramarital relationships, and Lucia's experiences recovering from breast cancer.

To begin with, I found this quite a disorienting read: there are frequent and abrupt shifts in perspective and time which can be difficult to follow, and it took quite a long time for most of the characters to come into focus. However, I did become more absorbed by the novel as it progressed and found myself rooting for Lucia, Jess and Patrick to claim some sort of freedom for themselves. There are some good observations and also some very funny lines.

That said, I didn't find the portrayal of Ray's abusive control of his family members quite believable - he is presented such a monstrous character with no redeeming features (it is implied that he can be more charismatic and likeable at times, but we never see this) so it was hard to understand why Leah is so blindly devoted to her father, why Martyn cares more about Ray's approval than that of his more talented and celebrated wife, or why Lucia puts up with his totally intolerable behaviour for so long. Mendelson also offers some really interesting ideas in this novel about artistic rivalry within a marriage, but I think this topic has been better explored by novelists like Meg Wolitzer and Siri Hustvedt.

Nonetheless, a decent read with some enjoyable elements. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

In 'The Exhibitionist' by Charlotte Mendelson the Hanrahan family gather together to celebrate Ray Hanrahan's latest art exhibition. A once famous artist, Ray has had a long fallow period, and is now hoping that he will once again be lauded. At the same time as this:

- His wife Lucia's star is rising, much to Ray's despair and her fear.
- Jess, his daughter, is returning home, wanting to escape a relationship that mirrors that of her parents.
- Patrick, Ray's stepson, is striving for independence
- Leah, Ray's beautiful daughter, continues to chase daddy's love at the expense of her own.

All of the characters in this novel are hugely flawed. With his fragile ego and need to maintain control, Ray is a monster. Lucia has for years pandered to his drives and needs, and has sacrificed her children's needs to do this. As a result all three children are damaged in different ways, and seek to manage this damage differently.

This book is brilliantly written and well observed. I loved lines like "But he said Lucia was being narrow-minded, controlling, jealous, so she endured. She tried to be warm and welcoming, even though she wanted to raise the drawbridge, put the oil on to boil." However I also found the novel very slow paced and the characters actions infuriating. Consequently I found reading this a bit of a slog and would have preferred more pace and less introspection.

I can imagine reading "The Exhibitionist" by Charlotte Mendelson for my book club. There is plenty to discuss: each character is well-crafted, has plenty of back story and of course there is the subject of Ray and his art. Some characters, like Ray, were completely dislikeable. I am very much on team Lucia. This poor woman, sacrificing her career so that Ray can have his come back. Not everyone will see it like that and in their big dysfunctional family, everyone takes a different side. I really hope she made the right decision for herself in the end.

One of those books that is crafted rather than written - it fits into the North London genre - sort of Monica Ali/Zadie Smith-like. It is an examination of an arty family, who behave as if they are more cultured, knowing and refined than mere mortals, and hence their pain is deeper and more emotionally felt than you and I. As you can tell, I did not like them as a family, they are the sort of people I would scurry away from and thank my husband and family for being simple, straight forward beings.
Not liking the cast of characters is not necessarily a disaster when it comes to a book, if they all get their comeuppance it can be very satisfying. However this tale is a real slow starter, I really had to work at reading it, then suddenly towards the end lots of action occurs. The narrator changes every paragraph so it took a bit of work to establish the thoughts and action to a particular character, which with the various goings on is quite important. Being positive - I finished it.

A book all about family dynamics. The family we are about to get an in-depth look at is hardly perfect. Each of its members has a skeleton in their closet, but that is precisely what makes this tale so great.

“It hurts without ending, having a child who hates you, almost as much as having a child who hates himself.”

🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨

The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson is published 17 March from Mantle/ @panmacmillan. Thank you for my early copy via @NetGalley.

———

“The longer the marriage, the harder truth becomes…”

______

The Exhibitionist is set over a weekend in which the Hanrahan family prepare for narcissistic father Ray’s first exhibition in decades.

It took me roughly 100ish pages to “get into” the story and to find the voice of the novel - which was hard because we alternate between Ray’s wife’s, his three children’s & potential future son-in-laws point of view. However, by half way through the novel, it was obvious who’s POV we were hearing from.

Whilst I got into a good rhythm in reading this, I’m not sure I actually enjoyed the book. There’s a lot to unpack with this incredibly dysfunctional family. They are all (except Patrick) unbelievably annoying and infuriating to read about. They’ve all got trauma and are dealing with it in different ways - the trauma has all stemmed from the worst father ever, Ray; and until they all remove themselves from him, they’re never going to have a life.

In short: the Hanrahan’s are all a bunch of pompous, posh-talking, self centred twats and are the worst type of people (again, except Patrick - poor Patrick).

There was an awful lot of references, subtle hints and mentions of each persons “issues” but I found they just didn’t delve deep enough. It was all on the surface, Patrick’s break down, Lucia’s breast cancer, Jess’s unwanted pregnancy, Leah’s absolutely-useless-and-can’t-do-anything-so-she’ll-just-suck-up-to-her-father.

As the novel is set over one weekend it’s going to be hard to explore all the issues of the characters but by the end I just didn’t feel any sort of resolution for anyone and was kind of disappointed - but then I think the author’s intention isn’t to give a resolution, but to show us the mess that is family and relationships.

The prose, whilst initially takes time to get accustomed to, was very good. The imagery (I can’t get over the state of their house), the sense of tension in the build up to the calamitous climax and the alternating POVs made you want to keep reading to find out each characters take on the current scene was well executed.

I’d recommend this book but would say it takes time to get into, and it’s best to read it with as little breaks between as possible - because it’s set over a weekend, things are happening quickly and you need to keep up with each characters current whereabouts.

⭐️⭐️💫 (2.5/5)

Blurb:

Meet the Hanrahan family, gathering for a momentous weekend as famous artist and notorious egoist Ray Hanrahan prepares for a new exhibition of his art – the first in many decades – and one he is sure will burnish his reputation for good.



His three children will be there: beautiful Leah, always her father’s biggest champion; sensitive Patrick, who has finally decided to strike out on his own; and insecure Jess, the youngest, who has her own momentous decision to make…



And what of Lucia, Ray’s steadfast and selfless wife? She is an artist, too, but has always had to put her roles as wife and mother first. What will happen if she decides to change? For Lucia is hiding secrets of her own, and as the weekend unfolds and the exhibition approaches, she must finally make a choice.

'The Exhibitionist' centres around a single, critical weekend for the Hanrahan family - a pair of London based sixty-something artists and their three grown up children. Everyone tiptoes around father Ray, a selfish and controlling monster. Mother Lucia has constantly sabotaged her own career, friendships and happiness to avoid his jealous rages. Their children have all been damaged one way or another - Patrick is a nervous wreck, Leah is fanatically devoted to her father to the exclusion of any life of her own, and Jess has fled to the other end of the country and an unhappy relationship of her own.

The weekend in question is Ray's first exhibition for some time and is therefore a big deal. But all of his family have problems and secrets of their own which threaten to come to a head as they gather together for the opening night. Exactly how and to what extent they are going to implode gives the story a sort of horrifying momentum.

I've read other books by Charlotte Mendelson and enjoyed them. But this one really didn't work for me for two main reasons. Firstly, the characters were so hard to like. Ray was self-absorbed to the point of caricature, and whilst I wanted to feel sorry for Lucia, I found the way she had enabled his behaviour and allowed her children to be damaged by it incomprehensible. Even the three children weren't terribly likeable. When you don't really like the characters you're reading about, it's hard to care much about what happens to them. A very rare writer can achieve a great book with characters that you don't root for, but Mendelson is not that writer.

The other factor spoiling my potential enjoyment of this novel was the writing style. It was so overdone - repetitive, wallowing and lacking in subtlety. Every point has to be made again and again, as if the reader is too stupid to get it unless it's hammered in. Mendelson should have more confidence in her ability to get her message across without needing to over-egg it. The writing also had a maddening and very confusing habit of flicking between viewpoint characters without any indication it had done so, even in the middle of a conversation. There's nothing wrong with writing from multiple viewpoints but shifting every paragraph really doesn't work.

On the positive side, the depiction of the reality of long-term effects from successful cancer treatment was well done and not something that you see tackled much in literature. Also novels that feature and raise awareness of coercive control domestic abuse are worthwhile - although the lack of real consequences for the perpetrator in this instance is frustrating. I just wish the characters could have been more sympathetic though, as I was left feeling as annoyed with the victims as I did with the monstrous Ray himself.

Overall this might be worth reading if you have a particular interest in fiction about dysfunctional families or domestic abuse - although there's no shortage of other (better) options in that genre. It isn't a novel I'd recommend outside of that - there are better ways to spend precious reading time.

The title refers to Ray, a famous artist who has gathered his family for his first exhibition in many years. We meet the family gathering at the neglected, almost squalid family home in London, and witness Ray’s truly terrible treatment of them all. The now adult children of the family are traumatised by their upbringing, and their mother Lucia shows how she has enabled this awful behaviour in vain attempts to appease Ray. I read with the literary equivalent of watching through my fingers as tensions build and the big event looms.

I loved this. I am a big Charlotte Mendelson fan and I think this is her best yet:
The Hanrahans are a big dysfunctional family. At the heart is toxic, manipulative father Ray, a mediocre artist.
Married to him is compliant Lucia, also an artist (a much better one) spending her life placating Ray.
And there are Ray’s daughters - fiercely loyal Leah, and Jess who is echoing her mother’s life as she maintains an unfulfilling relationship.
The family is brought together as Leah stages an exhibition of Ray’s work. But things quickly start to fall apart.
I particularly like how Mendelson skips from character to character, narrating in each voice. The characters are so well-draw that it’s always easy to tell whose head you’re in.
The story is gripping and fast-paced. I couldn’t put it down.
Recommended: a feisty, sad, angry, humorous novel taking on the big emotions.

This is my first ever DNF. I’m really sorry, but I’m not enjoying this book at all. The male lead is one of the most horrible characters I’ve ever come across and I can’t bear to read more about him. I got so annoyed that every one was worrying about him and pandering to his whims when his wife was going through breast cancer. All the characters seem self absorbed. The writer jumps from one character to another I get confused by whose head I am in.

A well written novel full of sharp portrayals of the dysfunctional family Hanrahan. I was not as enamored as the majority of other reviewers, I found the bullying, egotistical Ray tedious. Lucia, take advice from Eleanor Roosevelt, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this advance copy.

I love Charlotte Mendelson's writing and this novel was no exception. Nice to see her back on form after the coming-of-age novel Almost English, where the writing was beautiful and the details minutely observed, but the characters too nice and the stakes not that high. Here, like Daughters of Jerusalem and When We Were Bad, the stakes are high throughout and hit a peak of tension two thirds of the way through the book. The usual staples of Mendelson novels are there - a slightly-sexy matriarch recovering from illness and trauma, a man who acts like king of his Hampstead castle but really has no power, one sensible sibling and at least one with behavioural problems and an Oedipal/Electra complex about their parents.

Ray, the patriarch of the family, is a monster - apparently he used to be charismatic, talented and a good laugh, but we see none of what attracted Lucia to this weak, drug-addled bully and has-been artist. Meanwhile, the bratty behaviour of his daughter Leah becomes more deranged as they prepare for an exhibition of Ray's work - while Lucia, the sculptor and real talent, is being courted both by the Venice Biennale committee and a gorgeous, precisely drawn Asian female politician, Priya Menon.

There are a few odd moments towards the end, like non-driver Lucia's panicked drive down Holloway Road to pick up Ray's drug prescription where everyone panics for several pages about who is going to drive (do Uber and Addison Lee not exist in this world, and can they not spring for a cab after the money-hole of the exhibition)? but really these are small quibbles for a novelist who has finally returned and embraced the themes she loves best, and which her fans will no doubt enjoy as much as I did.

Charlotte Mendelson’s story’s an intriguing, if flawed, snapshot of an exceptionally dysfunctional family. Ray the patriarch’s a washed-up artist, a former hot prospect who’s long since lost the plot, now he delights in manipulating everyone around him, venting his narcissistic rage on his long-suffering family, especially his wife Lucia. Lucia’s growing success as an artist and her mix of defiance - shown in her secret affair with a local woman and politician Priya – and self-effacement in the wake of Ray’s relentless emotional abuse fuels much of the plot. In addition, there’s Leah his virginal, older daughter, still living at home, who’s like a throwback to a dutiful Victorian spinster bent on catering to her father’s every whim; his deeply fragile stepson Patrick desperate to find a way to leave home; and Jess the one who’s managed to break away. The action takes place over two days, as Ray prepares for a privately funded art show, his first in years, gathering together his near and distant friends and relatives.

Mendelson’s prose is well-crafted, although the initial pacing’s a little too leisurely, even for a novel that takes place in such a compressed timeframe. It’s a fairly conventional piece, as is the representation of the art world Lucia and Ray inhabit, there’s no trace of Insta art or NFTs anywhere to be seen here. In many ways, this seemed like a contemporary reboot of the "Hampstead novel", or in this case "Hampstead-adjacent", although the ending features overwrought, messy scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in a reworking of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” It’s also a little overly packed with issues: Patrick’s “breakdown”; Jess’s relationship difficulties; family squabbles over inheritance; unwanted pregnancy; Lucia’s traumatic experiences with cancer, plus her current midlife crisis around her work versus her identity as a wife; a coming-out narrative growing out of Lucia’s clandestine meetings with MP Priya; an ex-wife living next door; and the fall-out from Ray’s past affair. Incident’s piled upon incident, the portrayal of emotional abuse and its lasting impact’s often quite convincing, even painful to witness, but overall, I felt this lacked nuance and focus. As the novel unfolded, I found events took on a slightly absurdist quality, that undermined its realism. However, I found it fairly absorbing, even though it turned out not to be the kind of book I’d normally read.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Mantle for an arc

I do sometimes wonder if the characters I write are too nice. Perhaps, I think, I should find liberation in writing people utterly without merit. It might be fun. This is perhaps something Charlotte Mendelson has thought too because this book is full of ghastly people. We have seen in recent years a few storylines where a toxic selfish man has demanded attention far above his worth (not just in fiction, tbh) - I'm thinking of Meg Wolitzer's The Wife especially, and this idea drives The Exhibitionist. The man in question is Ray, screaming narcisisst, artist, father, philandering husband and someone who makes such demands on his family that his wife feels she needs to sabotage her own successful art career for his sake. And his children. All fucked up. Good grief. I wanted to shake them all so hard. Except the youngest daughter Jess, who I only wanted to shake a little bit.
Having said all that, this is a very well written book and an exercise in having your mouth hang open at how awful some people are. As such, it's quite entertaining. But I do wonder, do we like to have people so obviously black and white? Would there be more interest in having a more nuanced view of the characters? I think perhaps we would. A more realistic view of the people involved may also give us more idea of what would happen after the book ends, and there were several things left unresolved. Usually I don't mind this, but in a well balanced character you can often guess which way they will go and in these, I'm not sure.

Brilliant read, I was gripped!!


Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.