Almost English

Shortlisted this novel may have been for the Orange prize, but it has been a warning to me as a writer. A warning that characters must be people readers like, empathise with, and so are willing to suspend disbelief and read on, wanting to know what happens to them.

I did my best to finish the book but gave up. Oh nothing wrong with the writing, Ms Mendelson is a skillful writer, she has a way with words and creates vivid settings. BUT her two MC women characters drove me nuts! I could not believe in a 17 year old student, Marina, aiming for Cambridge, so must have some brains, who is so bloody stupid that she believes a boy, a senior student at her school, who does not know her from Eve, but she has a crush on, will turn up at her home show more in London. He doesn't even live in London!

As for her wet, vacillating drip of a mother! Oh dear! Laura I found weak and just plain pathetic. The kind of person it is kindly said of that 'they do not know when to come in out of the rain.'

The London home, a flat belonging to the in-laws, is a vivid setting. Those Hungarian in-laws are larger than life characters and nicely 3D and comic, but the main characters...! Ah me! How can I empathsise with a woman who has remained living squeezed in to her in-laws' flat on a sofa bed because her husband disappeared some years ago. Her poor daughter she neglects and the pair of them droop and drip whilst their Hungarian in-laws stampede through life.

I am sure there will be lots of readers who roar with laughter as they read the novel and regard it as a literary 'Bridget Jone's Diary', another book I found unreadable. But I am sorry, I cannot feel for those MCs and the book is wasted on me. show less

Marina is a 16 year old girl who lives with her English mother, Laura, in the basement flat of her paternal grandmother, an immigrant from Hungaria, and her two great-aunts, in the central London district of Bayswater. The older women love Marina dearly and desire that she read medicine at Cambridge, but they are insufferably opinionated and overbearing, which makes it difficult for her to express her own thoughts. Her mother, who separated from Marina's father 13 years before, has never remarried, and she works in a GP's office, where she has an intermittent affair with him.

The older women pool their limited resources in order to provide Marina with the best education possible, and the girl decides to transfer to Combe Alley, an show more English boarding school in Dorset that is notable more for its quirky traditions than its academic quality. Soon after her arrival Marina realizes that she does not fit in, due to her unfamiliarity with English manners and her lower middle class upbringing, and she is ignored by nearly everyone. However, she is emotionally paralyzed due to her suffocating home environment and inability to communicate with her mother, and she is unable to share her feelings of unhappiness and regret with her mother, her Hungarian relatives, or the few girls she is remotely friendly with.

At the same time Laura, who is even more emotionally stilted than her daughter, struggles with her own feelings of inadequacy and dissatisfaction, as she misses Marina terribly but is unable to share her feelings with her, and she is unable to establish an independent identity for herself in a household where silence is frowned upon.

Almost English for me was a painful and unrewarding read, with two of the most spineless and emotionally repressed women I've ever had the displeasure to read about. The story lines were trivial, and although the book was well written, I couldn't develop any interest in the main or the secondary characters. The repeated use of accented Hungarian words such as von-darefool (wonderful), tair-ible (terrible) and nair-vairmind (never mind) was highly irritating, and the the novel's denouement was unsatisfying and overly convenient for my taste. This was a curious and disappointing selection for this year's Booker Prize longlist, and I can only hope that the judges put down whatever it was they were smoking when they chose this book and realize that it has no place on the shortlist. show less

There are a lot of pleasures in this book. Awkward Marina's forays from cosy Hungarian exile community and family life in London, to boarding school and country house life with the reprehensible Vineys evoke both the warmth of the emigre community with its furs and nostalgia, and the coldness of the English boarding school with its strange rituals and peculiar games. Marina's mother Laura fumbles towards reconciliation with her feckless and hopeless husband. Comedy and pathos abound. The problem is, however, the mystery within the book - the hidden grudges and betrayals of the past - that is just not a strong enough peg. Both predictable and implausible, the book gropes to a foreseeable resolution that reflects poorly on the incidental show more delights of the book. show less

For me, this was a book that outstayed its welcome. I enjoyed the first half but then found that the writer's skill at communicating skilfully the acute embarrassments of a teenage girl became repetitive and the final dramatically embarrassing incident was out of character and unbelievable.

perhaps not 'VON-darefool, September 22, 2014

This review is from: Almost English (Kindle Edition)
I quite liked the first half, following Marina - a half Hungarian girl - who has chosen to go to boarding school, but now feels utterly homesick and yet unable to tell her family. Simultaneously the novel follows her rather ineffectual mother, Laura, who, since her husband left her, has had to live with his elderly Hungarian mother and her sisters, her life no longer her own. She too is pining - for Marina - but dare not say so... And then further characters enter the story...
But as the book progressed, I found myself getting bored with the story, the wretched Hungarian women ("DAR-link!) and drippy Laura. And the culminating events were show more just unutterably silly. show less

I think this is a book to just sit back and enjoy as someone else previously said. The depictions of the Hungarian sisters are just beautiful. This is a family who are fragmented but very much together.

Good read but was expecting more from this book