Daughters of Jerusalem

by Charlotte Mendelson (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.36

  Behind a 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 climate of static repression and bitterness enters Raymond Snow, the deadly rival of Jean's husband, 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.

  Beautifully written and very funny Daughters of Jerusalem is a tale of hidden love and hatred, of the need to belong and the desire for escape.

• Used

  Paperback
  2013

  $3.36

  `Brilliant . . . exhilarating . . . Exciting and memorably written, this is one of those rare reads that has you galloping to the end, but feeling bereft at having to say goodbye so soon' Independent

  Behind a 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 climate of static repression and bitterness enters Raymond Snow, the deadly rival of Jean's husband, 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.

  Beautifully written and very funny, Daughters of Jerusalem is a gripping tale of hidden love and hate, of the desire to belong and the need for escape.

  Daughters of Jerusalem won both the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award.

  `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

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $3.36

  She is sick of this - the sooty castles of the Banbury Road . . . She is sick of navy-blue corduroy, Gothic arches, famous fig trees, shabby dons' wives, cellars, rivers, genius children, stuttering and gold leaf. It is your fault, she thinks, approaching her husband's college, as she glimpses her neighbour, an entirely silent botanist, attempting to untangle his own beard from a hawthorn tree. None of you are normal. Is normal. And I am.In a shabby, book-choked house in North Oxford live the Lux family. Victor, a dedicated professor, is desperate to be elected to give the prestigious annual Spenser lecture. Jean, his unassuming wife, is tentatively experimenting with the boundaries of her marital freedom. Eve, an over-achiever like her father, is suffering from a dangerous teenage angst - straining to achieve top marks in her exams and yet always in the shadow of her younger sister, Pheobe, who is perfect, it seems.Into this climate of repression and bitterness there comes an unworldly don, Victor's b?te-noir, who shows interest in the vulnerable Eve. Meanwhile, Jean's best friend, Helen, has something she is yearning to tell: a confession that may alter everyone's constrainingly absurd life for ever.Daughters of Jerusalem is a captivating tale of hidden love and secret hatred, of the desire to belong and the need for escape, and of the fine line between wanting to be discovered and fearing the consequences when the delicious unknown becomes brutally exposed . . .