<b>Mendelson is a master at family drama,</b> and plots don’t get much more dramatic than this . . . <b>Exhilarating</b>

The Times

<b>Soul-scouringly good</b>

- Nigella Lawson,

Sex, desire, deep-seated marital resentment, monstrous artists, determined wives: it's <b>a delicious, piquant comedy of manners, and Mendelson's serrated prose will have you wincing at every word</b>

Daily Mail

Like Katherine Heiny and Maria Semple, Mendelson is skilled at rendering the grotesque fascinating . . . It is also funny; so funny . . . <b>Reading <i>The Exhibitionist </i>is like eating a rich, delicious and wildly elaborate cream cake. You know you'll regret devouring the whole thing at once, but it's very hard to stop</b>

The i

<b>One of the funniest writers in Britain</b> . . . [The Exhibitionist] is so devoid of secondhand sentences that it’s quite possible [Mendelson] spent all nine years since its predecessor polishing her jokes and turning phrases round until they shine . . . <b>A precision of observation that made me laugh frequently and smile when I wasn’t laughing</b>

The Guardian

<b>Electric . . . and has a hint of HBO's <i>Succession</i> </b>. . . <i>The Exhibitionist </i>is both a roiling family drama and a chilling portrait of enmeshment, coercive control and enabled addiction

- Madeleine Feeney, The Sunday Telegraph

Unutterably brilliant

- Lucy Worsley,

<b>A deliciously evocative novel</b> laced with sex and art

- Financial Times,

<b>A magnificent book, witty and furious and not a word out of place</b>. I am obsessed

- Elizabeth Macneal, bestselling author of <i>The Doll Factory </i>and <i>Circus of Wonders</i>,

Exceptional

Woman & Home

A compulsive distillation of artistic ego, midlife passion and family dysfunction . . . <b>Hilarious, sexy and thoughtful</b>

Mail on Sunday

A <b>devastating, blackly comic</b> portrait of middle-class dysfunction . . . A fine and haunting book

- Sarah Moss, Guardian

<b>A truly wonderful novel</b>, and a funny and wise one, too; the individual components sparkle, the whole movement beguiles

- Sunjeev Sahota, author of 2021 Man Booker-longlisted <i>The China Room</i>,

<b>I don't think I've ever read anything that is simultaneously <i>so </i>elegant and <i>so </i>propulsive</b> - every single sentence Charlotte Mendelson writes is arrestingly powerful. I think this book is <i>beautiful, </i>but it's also <b>funny, furious, sexy, blissfully hot and cold and wild in its rage</b>

- Daisy Buchanan, author of <i>Insatiable </i>,

The unhappy Hanrahans fall apart, their story playing out with devastating, exuberant glee . . . <b>Honest and frenetically paced, this is a painfully funny look at art, ambition and damaging family dynamics</b>

Sunday Express (S Magazine)

Mendelson's great success is to make the endless sacrifices, self-conscious denials and forbidden emotions of the Hanrahans heartbreakingly relatable . . . <b><i>The Exhibitionist </i>is an undeniable success</b>

Literary Review

Sharp and sad, witty and hopeful, as with all Mendelson’s work, <b><i>The Exhibitionist</i> is both forensically aware of all the flaws of humanity but also able to be forgiving and compassionate</b>

- Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of <i>Everyone Is Still Alive</i>,

<p>A welcome return for the chronicler of family secrets, with a tale of art, ego and marriage</p>

Guardian

The blackly amusing story of how [Lucia] finds her voice and rediscovers her sexuality in midlife is hilariously traced here by one of my favourite waspish writers

- Mariella Frostrup, Sunday Times

<b>A treat</b> . . . Excoriating observation of the art world, crazy toxic family intrigues, <b>wit, wisdom and brilliant writing</b>

- Muriel Gray,

Charlotte Mendelson has created a magnificently monstrous character . . . It's finely observed, witty and incredibly tense

The Times (Summer Reads Picks)

Longlisted for the Women's Prize, this is a darkly funny portrait of a dysfunctional family bent out of shape over decades by its narcissistic artist patriarch -- and of what happens when his wife will no longer squahs her own creative energies. <b>Wise, waspish and emotionally astute, it's addictive reading</b>

Guardian (Summer Books)

Read it for the characters (some you’ll love, some you’ll want to shake!), who I missed when I finished this funny family drama

Good Housekeeping (Best Summer Reads)

A masterful observation of the privileged corners of the art world: power dynamics, narcissistic tendencies and ego-boosting exhibitions

The Big Issue

In this excoriating spin on the bourgeois Hampstead novel, a portrait of an artistic marriage in free fall doubles as a savagely funny take-down of male entitlement

Telegraph's 50 Best Books of 2022

<b>The Times Book of the Year . . .</b> A superb and eccentric family comedy, set across a single weekend. But it’s also really, horribly dark in its depiction of cruelty and crushing love.

- Susie Goldsbrough, The Times

<b><i>The Exhibitionist </i>is the funniest novel I read this year.</b> It is one of those rare books that could be driven purely on the strength of its witty, flexible sentences, even if there wasn't an emotional payload and (a bit of) a plot. <b>It will delight anyone who takes pleasure in words, and what is reading but taking pleasure in words?</b>

- John Self, The Critic (Fiction Books of the Year)