title: The Exhibitionist by: Mendelson, Charlotte published: 2022-03-08 read: 2023-04 preview

The Guardian titles with: “A devastating, blackly comic portrait of middle-class dysfunction and a family with a monster at its centre”.

I’d say, that goes too far.

I finished this book, reading while walking the streets since I wanted, needed, HAD TO know if the story ends well, for Lucia, or not.  Please, Lucia, please please please!  Forget Ray!

Well, and that for 200 and more pages, basically.

By now I know myself well enough to know that one thing I like is books, stories, I can relate to.  In which I feel my own guilt, or have seen something reminiscent.  And, The Exhibitionist is that, exactly that, for me.

But first things first.  In this book, Ray, the father and an artist, is abusive towards, well, basically everybody.  Of course worst towards his wife, Lucia.  But also to her son, from a previous marriage, and their two daughters.  Nay, not the oldest one, who sides with her abhorrent dad.

Abhorrent?  Or just, basically normal?  No, my dad was not like that.  Nor was my grandfather.  But their wives were towards Ray as Lucia is towards Ray.  Defending the brute.  Saying, he doesn’t mean it like that; he means it well; he loves you.  And here I hear my own mom saying decades ago, well, your dad never says he loves you, but he certainly does!  (To which I replied, well, then he can say so.)

Back to the book.  Ray is an artist, and so is Lucia.  And the whole book centres around an exhibition of his work that the whole family plans, and that basically fails because there are (almost) no paintings.  

Lucia, the more successful, up to the point where she gets a huge commission.  And turns it down, of course, because she knows how Ray will react.

And he does.

Need I say more?  As my grandmother defended my grandfather (and she coped well, in fact); and my mother my father (and she had her way of dealing with it); my partners never did defend me, so perhaps I’m not such a terrible brute… 

So you see, I could relate to this story, even though the people were totally different, and the stories were.

My most beloved book in quite a while.

The style that Mendelson uses is quite, ehm, fitting.  All the time people are interrupted, it’s a rare thing when someone finishes a sentence, or a thought, and as reader that sometimes leaves you in the dark.  Or, more precisely, in the grey: you think that this is what’s happening, but it takes you a few pages or chapters to get reassurance.  If at all.

So I often had to go back, reread the last two pages or so, do they really mean that? and it sounds annoying, but it was not.  Also because, there is so much going on, between Lucia and her daughters Jess and Leah; the son Patrick; Jess’ boyfriend; Leah’s love which only pops up much later; Lucia’s lover; and a few other characters that keep popping in and out.

Plus, for some reason I could not reconstruct, I had read a small part of the book ages ago, and needed some time to find my way back into it.  

Worth a reread.