There were some good parts of this book and some parts that I found that I didnt like. I liked the writing, the characters were well written and well developed and I found the stroyline interesting and engaging to the point where i read it quickly. I found the characters relatable and likeable too.
However i found the pacing of the book really slow and it felt like it dragged on several occassions and that made the experience just slightly off putting for me personally. Overall though I enjoyed reading it.

I have to be honest, I was attracted to this book by its cover - I think it's lovely. The colours are striking, the house stands out and is extraordinary looking with the flowering plants growing out of the windows with a hint of out of control wildness. And I found that this artwork is a very fitting tribute to the book.

The house and it's overgrown garden are very central to the novel as a whole. This book is a study of a dysfunctional family in their London home during one important weekend. The parents are artists and the weekend is the weekend of the opening of an important art show. The adult children are three very different characters, not all living in the family home all of the time. Gradually, each person's story is revealed along with family arguments, loyalties, anxieties, differences and so on.

This is an interesting read but I found the pace slow and the ending frustrating. In the end, you understand some of what has happened and what will happen next, but much is left unsaid. The writing is beautiful throughout.

Thank you to NetGalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

A brilliant family saga with a familiar structure (big get-together, tensions arise, secrets come out) but a fresh and distinctive take on family dynamics. The Hanrahans seem to live an enviable life: a rambling house in North London, an artistic couple and their bohemian brood, big family gatherings, professional success. But the cover of the book lets you know what you are in for: the front of the dolls’ house opens up, suggesting a look behind the facade. And the roses, creeping out from the windows could be the equivalent of roses around the door of a cottage, the classic idyll, or they could be the briars of Sleeping Beauty, stifling and trapping those inside (in the book it’s actually Virginia Creeper but you get the picture). The Exhibitionist of the title is Ray, to whom we are introduced in the first sentence as he pronounces ‘Tolstoy was an idiot’. The book centres around a weekend where his family and friends will descend for a private view for his latest exhibition.
Charlotte Mendelson has a precise, elegant style, laced with sharp wit. The wordplay reminded me of Jilly Cooper, in the best possible way – this is no bonkbuster although Mendelson is rather good on the frisson and sensuality of illicit attraction, along with the yearning and ache that accompany love that cannot be fulfilled. She is also excellent on the agonies and ecstasies of being a parent: Lucia recalls her daughter, ‘beloved Jess, at whose shape, her fully grown survival she longs to marvel, whose scent she wants to carry around her neck in a little bottle for head sniffs.’ Correspondingly, there are poignant moments when Lucia catches herself saying the wrong thing to her children and instantly regrets it, the eternal lot of a mother, trying to keep everyone happy and maintain equilibrium.
As you discover that the house itself is crumbling and rotting around the family’s ears, it becomes clear that the lives of those inside are not what they seem. Unlike, say, The Corrections though it is a fun book to read, despite the desperate unhappiness it describes. This is down to the style and artistry of Mendelson’s writing.
It did take me a while to get into, probably because there are a lot of characters and introducing them all slows the tempo down. It’s only really by the middle that the book hits its stride and pulls you in. Rest assured that, if you stick with it, you will be richly rewarded.

This is the best book I've read this year. I gobbled it up on two long bus journeys. Characters that you want to either hug or murder, trapped in a dysfunctional family, a plot with escalating tension (and the stuff of my nightmares: will there be enough food for everyone?) and some really wonderful writing - similes that stop you in your tracks (as good as Raymond Chandler who, in my view, is the king of similes). Examples: "He still feels cold and rigid as a park railing"; "Their feet on the frosty gravel sound like a radio play" ; "the best top Lucia has ever seen: short and sexy and made of huge black sequins, like a military fish"; "Sukie's black blouse is translucent, balloon-sleeved, like a dubious St Petersburg governess about to marry money"; "An odd expression crosses Lucia's face: fear or excitement, swiftly checked, like an EtchaSketch twiddled clean".

More lovely sentences: "Jess can tell they're automatically adopting the Art Face: knowledgeable reverence"; "At the back of Lucia's mind unease flicks its muscular tail". And a description of a really messy kitchen in which "like chicken pox scars, family history lingers".

Lucia is married to Ray, a thorough monster, but "How her heart aches for him, his brutal fragility, his frail boyish ego; has ached." The poignancy of that semi-colon and those last two words!

I was very glad to say goodbye to Ray and the other men in the book were mostly tiresome but I really wanted to know what happened to Lucia and her daughters: finishing a book wanting to know more of characters is, for me, the acid test of quality. Highly recommended. (Thanks to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for an ARC.)

I'm a big fan of Charlotte Mendelson's writing, but this was a real slow-burn for me. So many things happening to a small cast of characters in a short space of time (in terms of pages rather than chronology) felt overwhelming and a little exaggerated at first - and for the first third of the book I wasn't sure whether to continue. But I'm glad that I did, and I very much enjoyed the rest., becoming totally invested in the outcome.

"Her mind, once a tightly shuttable box, became a tree filled with stupid birds which, at the least distraction, wheeled into the sky, some in formation, others lost, taking time to settle and quiet before, at another noise, they'd be off again."

This has to be one of the most relatable descriptions of what anxiety feels like I've ever read. I'm not a highlighter sort of person but wanted to keep this in my back pocket.

From the first page, I climbed inside The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson and kept one foot in the Hanrahan's disordered home until it was finished. Patriarchal brat, Ray, is trying to revive the dying embers of his artistic career whilst his emotionally fettered wife, Lucia, desperately tries to extinguish the flames of her own potential fame. Their adult children bear the weight of their parents' preoccupations with varying consequences.

Mendelson's writing is the kind that disappears into the narrative. I mean that as an absolute compliment; none of the effort of writing is visible here which allows the reader to seamlessly blend in with family.

The narrative is presented in four parts, lending the novel a theatrical sense of progress. The plot's centerpiece is a privately organised art exhibition. Mendelson cleverly captures how the airless tension in the Hanrahan family means that seemingly minor events take on seismic significance.

I loved it from beginning to end and would recommend it to anyone who likes to read about family relationships and just great prose.

This was one of the best of family dramas I got the opportunity to read this year. 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 delicious!

A very interesting and unusual take on families, relationships and how everything intertwines. Pace a bit slow at times, but overall a striking read.

The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mandelson


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.
An odd read but in a good way ! Very different to what I'd usually read , I really enjoyed the family dynamics of the Hanrahan , some slightly bonkers , many flawed , but it really showed how families can have a love - hate relationship but still function ( just ! )