Daughters of Jerusalem

Charlotte Mendelson

2004 Winner

Somerset Maugham Award

2003 Winner

John Llewellyn Rhys Prize

2003 Nominee

Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award

30 September 2009
9780330475051
336 pages

Synopsis

Beautifully written and bitingly funny, Charlotte Mendelson's prize-winning Daughters of Jerusalem is a gripping novel of hidden love and hate, of the desire to belong, and the need for escape.

Amidst the crumbling yellow stone of Oxford and its prestigious university, secrets are stirring within the Lux family home . . .

Jean, the constrained and guilt-ridden wife of an academic, is waiting for excitement – and it will come from an unexpected source.

Eve, Jean's intelligent eldest daughter, luxuriates in wounded murderous jealousy of her younger sister and is on the brink of snapping.

Raymond, the loathed rival of Jean's husband, begins to show interest in Eve.

And Helena, Jean's best friend, has a confession, the revelation of which may just alter everyone's lives forever.

'Brilliant and witty . . . Mendelson's second bewitchingly erotic and darkly dramatic novel confirms her as a stylish, perceptive chronicler of the heart's hidden desires' - Daily Mail

'Superb . . . funny, exciting, lyrical, poignant, redemptive' - Guardian

This deliciously waspish — actually, hilarious — story of a destructive Oxford academic family has stayed with me longer than many did. Pure, very wicked joy
A superb, hilarious farce of dysfunctional academic family life . . . Funny, exciting, lyrical, poignant, redemptive
Brilliant and witty . . . Mendelson’s second bewitchingly erotic and darkly dramatic novel confirms her as a stylish, perceptive chronicler of the heart’s hidden desires