Customer Reviews

Daughters of Jerusalem

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, the official plot description above is actually not for this book. This novel is, in part, about the relationship between two sisters, but they are not twins, and there is no boy who comes between them. Really, it's a story about a family, akin to "Bee Season," where relationships and favoritism intertwine, and secrets grow.

It also happens to contain one of the most vivid and subtle depictions of a formerly heterosexual woman embarking on a lesbian affair. In wonderfully realistic yet spare psychological detail, the novel goes through that emotional journey from friendship to revelation to initial disgust to less-than-platonic moments to full-blown love affair. Given the dearth of well-written lesbian fiction out there, this novel is a must-read.

I'd like to second Jennifer T's review above. This very accomplished novel, the second from Mendelson, will no doubt be of particular (though hardly exclusive) interest to lesbian readers dying for someone else to look to besides Sarah Waters or Nicola Griffith for real writing. As of May '07 the novel hasn't been released in the US; presumably this will change sometime soon--her third is due out this summer. Mendelson's already won a Somerset Maugham award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for writers under 35).

This is a very British piece of writing, both by temperament and subject. It's set inside Oxford & concerns itself with the secret lives of the very dysfunctional academic family who lives there. Mendelson wisely uses her characters' implosive levels of reserve to ratchet up the tension. Because surprisingly enough, 'Daughters of Jerusalem' is a page-turner--with a pitch-perfect ending. The writing's witty & abstruse when it needs to be, which offsets the intensely claustrophobic atmosphere around these characters--but it's Mendelson's empathy which gives the story its real power. Mendelson's particularly effective at showing how, from the ruins of the best of intentions--leaving the worst of emotions to run amok--noble actions can still spring forth from ignoble motives.

From the book cover:
Behind the crumbling facade of seeming normality, secrets begin to stir within the Lux family home. Jean Lux, constrained academic wife and guilty mother, is waiting for excitement - and it will come from an unexpected source. Meanwhile Eve, her intelligent elder daughter, luxuriates in wounded jealousy, until her loathing for her only sister verges on the murderous. Into this repression and bitterness enters Raymond Snow, who begins to show interest in the vulnerable Eve. Meanwhile, Jean's best friend, Helena, has something she is yearning to tell: a confession that may alter everyone's life forever.

"Daughters of Jerusalem" follows during an academic year the Lux family, apparently normal on the surface, but on reality completely dysfunctional. Victor, a history lecturer at Oxford, is obsessed with being chosen for the prestigious Spenser lecture and with his rival fellow lecturer Raymond. Jean, his much younger wife, that passively sees life passing by and then gets involved in a lesbian affair with her best friend Helena. Eve, the self-mutilating intelligent but social inept elder daughter, craves for the love and attention of her parents which is mostly given to her sister, the spoilt and manipulative Phoebe.
In "Daughters of Jerusalem", Charlotte Mendelson wrote an acerbic and humorous picture of Oxford and the academia in the 80s. We have a portrait of all those very intelligent but weird dons, self-centered, competitive and obsessed with things common people don't have any use for and incapable of dealing with everyday things. However, this weirdness and expectations in terms of achievement have a terrible impact on their families, namely their children, and life can be hell. This is a story of love, emotional and sexual self-discovery, but also of jealousy, hatred, pettiness and rivalry. Through her changing perspective and detailed and perceptive writing, Charlotte Mendelson is able to give us three-dimensional and complex characters, but so wrapped in their self-obsessions that they are unable to see what is really happening around them until events finally make them really face each other. An excellent book.