Francesca Peacock
Family Fortunes
Charlotte Mendelson’s The Exhibitionist is set over one eventful weekend, as the Hanrahan family prepares for the patriarch artist Ray’s first exhibition in over a decade. Most of the story unfolds in a decaying, bohemian house in north London, as Mendelson deftly sketches the tensions within a family strained to breaking point. Tolstoy’s famous aphorism about the uniqueness of unhappy families is pertinent here: with a Lear-like father, a near-incestuous, sycophantic daughter and a browbeaten, traumatised mother, the Hanrahans seem a prime example of how tragically specific family dysfunctionality can be.
Mendelson’s great success is to make the endless sacrifices, self-conscious denials and forbidden emotions of the Hanrahans heartbreakingly relatable amid the self-indulgent artistic chaos that the characters inhabit. Lucia, Ray’s wife, has spent decades suppressing her own artistic ambitions and her youngest daughter, Jess, struggles against this generational pattern
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘He has become a kind of global guru, public intellectual and consultant to the great. He is the ultimate geopolitical gerontocrat.’
From July 2022: Piers Brendon on Henry Kissinger.
Piers Brendon - Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her
Piers Brendon: Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her - Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Even setting to one side the historically neuralgic relationship with ... Ireland, Britain’s insular periphery has from at least the time of the Romans presented difficulties for authorities wishing to centralise.’
Peter Marshall on Britain's islands.
Peter Marshall - Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago
Peter Marshall: Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago - The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
literaryreview.co.uk
Offer ends soon! Take advantage of our best ever Black Friday offer and get a year's subscription for £29.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/blackfriday/