Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English
by Natasha Solomons
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After escaping Germany during WWII, Jack and Sadie Rosenblum, together with their baby daughter, settle into a life of acting "English." In post-war England, however, no golf club will admit a Rosenblum. So Jack hatches a wild idea: he'll build his own. It's an obsession Sadie does not share, particularly when Jack relocates them to a thatched roof cottage in Dorset to embark on his project.Tags
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Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English – Natasha Solomons
4 stars
In August of 1937, Jack Rosenblum, his wife and small daughter arrive in England. They are German Jewish Refugees. No other members of their family escape what is to come. Jack determines to follow every word of the advice given the pamphlet “While you are in England: Helpful Information and Friendly Guidance for Every Refugee”. Jack’s watchword becomes “assimilation”.
From an initial purchase of some odd lengths of carpet, Jack builds a successful manufacturing business. As the years pass he studies the English carefully and adds a growing list of behaviors to the helpful advice pamphlet. Jack aspires to be a typical English gentleman. To be an English gentleman one show more must belong to a golf club. And here Jack runs into a snag. Golf clubs being bastions of snobbery and prejudice, Jack is refused admission. Undaunted, Jack determines to build his own golf course and make the membership open to everyone.
What follows is a warm, humorous story. Initially snubbed by the Dorset natives, Jack wins them over to his cause. Setbacks and escapades abound in their efforts to complete nine holes in time for the Queen’s coronation. Jack charts his progress in a series of unanswered letters to Bobby Jones and drinks the fiery home-brewed cider provided by his staunch friend, Curtis. Meanwhile, Jack’s wife, Sadie provides a counterbalance to Jack’s ambitions. Sadie devotes her days to remembering the dead by baking the recipes preserved in Mutti’s cookbook. In a sometimes painful process, Jack and Sadie find their way back to their earlier loving relationship.
This is an English village comedy in the tradition of James Herriot with engaging characters, a beautiful setting and a sense of community. The underlying message is always felt, but it is not preached. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d like to go to Dorset to play a round of golf, even though, like Jack, I’ve never swung a club. show less
4 stars
In August of 1937, Jack Rosenblum, his wife and small daughter arrive in England. They are German Jewish Refugees. No other members of their family escape what is to come. Jack determines to follow every word of the advice given the pamphlet “While you are in England: Helpful Information and Friendly Guidance for Every Refugee”. Jack’s watchword becomes “assimilation”.
From an initial purchase of some odd lengths of carpet, Jack builds a successful manufacturing business. As the years pass he studies the English carefully and adds a growing list of behaviors to the helpful advice pamphlet. Jack aspires to be a typical English gentleman. To be an English gentleman one show more must belong to a golf club. And here Jack runs into a snag. Golf clubs being bastions of snobbery and prejudice, Jack is refused admission. Undaunted, Jack determines to build his own golf course and make the membership open to everyone.
What follows is a warm, humorous story. Initially snubbed by the Dorset natives, Jack wins them over to his cause. Setbacks and escapades abound in their efforts to complete nine holes in time for the Queen’s coronation. Jack charts his progress in a series of unanswered letters to Bobby Jones and drinks the fiery home-brewed cider provided by his staunch friend, Curtis. Meanwhile, Jack’s wife, Sadie provides a counterbalance to Jack’s ambitions. Sadie devotes her days to remembering the dead by baking the recipes preserved in Mutti’s cookbook. In a sometimes painful process, Jack and Sadie find their way back to their earlier loving relationship.
This is an English village comedy in the tradition of James Herriot with engaging characters, a beautiful setting and a sense of community. The underlying message is always felt, but it is not preached. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d like to go to Dorset to play a round of golf, even though, like Jack, I’ve never swung a club. show less
I like to read novels that inspire, that are filled with beautiful prose and have a story line that captures me from the beginning straight through to the end. Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English, by Natasha Solomons, is such a novel.
From the first page to the last, I was enthralled with the story of Jack Rosenblum, and his wife Sadie. They manage to flee Nazi Germany just before World War II with their young daughter, Elizabeth, and emigrate to England. Once they arrive there, they are given a pamphlet, on how to best fit into proper English life. Jack takes the pamphlet and begins to live in earnest by its contents. He goes one step further and adds his own items to the list, items he feels are of great importance in the quest to become a show more proper English citizen. By the time he is finished there are over 100 items on the list, with the last entry being a membership in an English golf club.
Natasha Solomons is extremely brilliant in her assessment of the characters, and her display of them. They are based, in part, on her own grandparents. She depicts Jack and Sadie with all of their humanness, their flaws, strengths, sorrows and joys, and gives the reader a radiant look at their will to survive and begin anew at all costs. Her visuals are vibrant, and the reader is given use of all of their senses through the illuminating prose. show less
From the first page to the last, I was enthralled with the story of Jack Rosenblum, and his wife Sadie. They manage to flee Nazi Germany just before World War II with their young daughter, Elizabeth, and emigrate to England. Once they arrive there, they are given a pamphlet, on how to best fit into proper English life. Jack takes the pamphlet and begins to live in earnest by its contents. He goes one step further and adds his own items to the list, items he feels are of great importance in the quest to become a show more proper English citizen. By the time he is finished there are over 100 items on the list, with the last entry being a membership in an English golf club.
Natasha Solomons is extremely brilliant in her assessment of the characters, and her display of them. They are based, in part, on her own grandparents. She depicts Jack and Sadie with all of their humanness, their flaws, strengths, sorrows and joys, and gives the reader a radiant look at their will to survive and begin anew at all costs. Her visuals are vibrant, and the reader is given use of all of their senses through the illuminating prose. show less
Jack and Sadie Rosenbloom emigrated to London, England just before the Second World War. When they arrived in their new country, Jack was given a checklist on how a proper English citizen behaves - a cheat sheet on how to blend in to his new home. Following it literally and without knowing all the nuances that any British citizen takes for granted sometimes leaves him puzzled and bewildered, but never daunted. Mr. Rosenbloom Dreams in English is Jack and Sadie's story of how they adapted to their new lives and sometimes how they didn't.
I really enjoyed Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English (called Mr. Rosenblum's List in the UK). I think Natasha Solomon did a fabulous job in relating what it's like to integrate into a new and very alien life. show more While I'm not Jewish, I found Jack and Sadie's experiences as Jewish immigrants easy to relate to and I recognized Jack's struggle to fit into a new country and its well-established culture very well. The author's light touch in representing the Rosenblum's struggle to blend in made the story a lot less heavy-handed than it might otherwise have been.
Food is used throughout the story to demonstrate how family and family history is cherished and memories held dear. One particular dessert, a baumtorte, is prepared by Sadie during her most challenging days and helps her cope with her feelings of sadness at the lives lost during the war. The author uses the layered cake as a rich metaphor for layers of memories.
The characters in this book are muti-faceted. Jack and Sadie are neither all good nor all bad - a bit of each quality are in both and it is what I believe gives the book depth and richness. The author knows her characters; Jack is normally an optimistic man and I couldn't help but root for him even when he did something that aggravated me. Writing from the perspective of a male character couldn't have been easy but Natasha Solomons succeeded.
I recommend this wonderful novel to anyone who enjoys reading stories about family bonds and true friendship. show less
I really enjoyed Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English (called Mr. Rosenblum's List in the UK). I think Natasha Solomon did a fabulous job in relating what it's like to integrate into a new and very alien life. show more While I'm not Jewish, I found Jack and Sadie's experiences as Jewish immigrants easy to relate to and I recognized Jack's struggle to fit into a new country and its well-established culture very well. The author's light touch in representing the Rosenblum's struggle to blend in made the story a lot less heavy-handed than it might otherwise have been.
Food is used throughout the story to demonstrate how family and family history is cherished and memories held dear. One particular dessert, a baumtorte, is prepared by Sadie during her most challenging days and helps her cope with her feelings of sadness at the lives lost during the war. The author uses the layered cake as a rich metaphor for layers of memories.
The characters in this book are muti-faceted. Jack and Sadie are neither all good nor all bad - a bit of each quality are in both and it is what I believe gives the book depth and richness. The author knows her characters; Jack is normally an optimistic man and I couldn't help but root for him even when he did something that aggravated me. Writing from the perspective of a male character couldn't have been easy but Natasha Solomons succeeded.
I recommend this wonderful novel to anyone who enjoys reading stories about family bonds and true friendship. show less
This book is about a Jewish couple who flee from Berlin in 1937 and arrive in England. Jack intends to integrate into English life as much as possible and starts to make a list, a comprehensive guide to the manners, customs and habits of England. His wife is baffled by his desire to become completely English, and prefers to live in the past lest she forget it.
I managed to read it in two days flat as it was due back at the library and I was unable to renew it. My general opinion of it is that it's a very odd book. The blurb made it sound like it was going to be an amusing story of a couple trying to fit into a foreign land and making mistakes and misunderstanding English culture. It's mostly about how Jack has completed most of his list show more but having been thwarted on the last point of joining a golf club, he decides to build his own. In Dorset. Really not at all what I expected it to be.
I found it hard to understand either of the characters. Although they're initially supposed to be middle-aged, they both seemed to be depicted as quite elderly from the start. They don't seem to communicate with each other and are each lost in their own worlds, until about ¾ of the way through when they finally come together to work on Jack's golf course. I found this lack of communication to be rather irritating, as it's shown that neither understands the other's obsessions but rather than asking about it, they just ignore the whole thing.
There is a definite Jewishness that pervades the whole book, from the Yiddish words that are sprinkled throughout to Sadie's use of cooking and baking for remembrance, and marking of anniversaries with food. There's no glossary to explain the Yiddish or occasional German though, so people not familiar with those languages or with Judaism as a whole may not get quite the same level of understanding from it. There's also a definite air of nostalgia throughout the whole book, and not just because of Sadie's constant mourning for the family, life and history she has left behind. The book is set between 1937 and about the mid 1950s or thereabouts, so the England that's depicted is rather old-fashioned and quaint.
There is some humour in the book, although mostly of the wry chuckle kind as opposed to laugh out loud humour. However, I found the book to be mostly tragic and I think this makes it a harder read that it need be. I also found quite a few events to be rather baffling as there seemed to be no explanation or reason for them. Sadie's sudden mad dash into a blizzard seemed completely out of the blue; although the mention of the myth of the Drowners in the chapter before made it rather obvious what was happening, there just seemed to be no need or reason for it. The happy ever after ending where it all comes all right in the end seemed to be at complete odds to the melancholy tone of the book, except that even that is tinged with sadness. All in all, a very mixed book that doesn't seem to quite know whether it's humorous or tragic and ends up having the tragic cancel out the humour. show less
I managed to read it in two days flat as it was due back at the library and I was unable to renew it. My general opinion of it is that it's a very odd book. The blurb made it sound like it was going to be an amusing story of a couple trying to fit into a foreign land and making mistakes and misunderstanding English culture. It's mostly about how Jack has completed most of his list show more but having been thwarted on the last point of joining a golf club, he decides to build his own. In Dorset. Really not at all what I expected it to be.
I found it hard to understand either of the characters. Although they're initially supposed to be middle-aged, they both seemed to be depicted as quite elderly from the start. They don't seem to communicate with each other and are each lost in their own worlds, until about ¾ of the way through when they finally come together to work on Jack's golf course. I found this lack of communication to be rather irritating, as it's shown that neither understands the other's obsessions but rather than asking about it, they just ignore the whole thing.
There is a definite Jewishness that pervades the whole book, from the Yiddish words that are sprinkled throughout to Sadie's use of cooking and baking for remembrance, and marking of anniversaries with food. There's no glossary to explain the Yiddish or occasional German though, so people not familiar with those languages or with Judaism as a whole may not get quite the same level of understanding from it. There's also a definite air of nostalgia throughout the whole book, and not just because of Sadie's constant mourning for the family, life and history she has left behind. The book is set between 1937 and about the mid 1950s or thereabouts, so the England that's depicted is rather old-fashioned and quaint.
There is some humour in the book, although mostly of the wry chuckle kind as opposed to laugh out loud humour. However, I found the book to be mostly tragic and I think this makes it a harder read that it need be. I also found quite a few events to be rather baffling as there seemed to be no explanation or reason for them. Sadie's sudden mad dash into a blizzard seemed completely out of the blue; although the mention of the myth of the Drowners in the chapter before made it rather obvious what was happening, there just seemed to be no need or reason for it. The happy ever after ending where it all comes all right in the end seemed to be at complete odds to the melancholy tone of the book, except that even that is tinged with sadness. All in all, a very mixed book that doesn't seem to quite know whether it's humorous or tragic and ends up having the tragic cancel out the humour. show less
This book follows the fortunes of Jack and Sadie, Jewish refugees from Germany trying to gain acceptance into English society in the years following the second world war. The way Jack is treated by some “proper” English people begs the question why he would ever want to be one of them, and yet his tenacity is one of the things that make him such an engaging character.
The author writes with such skill – describing the rural setting in such a way that the greenery seems to poke up through the page, and doing so again and again and making it new every time. She also incorporates little bits of magic into the story without ever stopping it feeling real. There is profound sadness but it is nicely balanced by humour, and there are show more issues – like the loss of the characters’ cultural identity and links with the past – which are clearly traceable as the story unfolds.
The author’s notes – complete with recipe - at the end were illuminating too. I am so going to make a Baumtorte. show less
The author writes with such skill – describing the rural setting in such a way that the greenery seems to poke up through the page, and doing so again and again and making it new every time. She also incorporates little bits of magic into the story without ever stopping it feeling real. There is profound sadness but it is nicely balanced by humour, and there are show more issues – like the loss of the characters’ cultural identity and links with the past – which are clearly traceable as the story unfolds.
The author’s notes – complete with recipe - at the end were illuminating too. I am so going to make a Baumtorte. show less
I recently read Solomon's "A Novel in the Viola" and loved it, so was particularly eager to see if this novel retained a similar kind of magic. Actually for me, this was even better- because it was so wonderfully off the wall and was a brilliantly eclectic mix of humour, heartbreak and optimism. This is a really cracking novel and as far as debuts go, I found it flawless.
Though the title of the book initially appeared a bit frothy and the cover a little bit twee, the context of the novel is actually quite substantial, focusing on a Jewish immigrant family arriving in Britain during WWII. Jacob (Jack) Rosenblum becomes fixated with trying to be accepted by his new countrymen and fitting in as a proper `English gentleman' much to the show more chagrin of his long-suffering wife, Sadie. Moving from London to deepest Dorset, the book chronicles the trials and tribulations of the immigrants trying to gain acceptance, a theme which will no doubt resonate with a lot of readers.
The tone of this novel rather put me in mind of Alexander McCall Smiths books- gentle and thought provoking, despite the issues concentrated on. The plot is not fast-paced but becomes all the more appealing for that and as a reader you really get pulled into the story and experience Jack and Sadie's journeys and troubles along with them.
The characters are wonderfully written and retain a real sense of charm and whimsy with all of their funny little foibles. The only one I couldn't really feel a lot for was Elizabeth, Jack and Sadie's daughter, who did appear a little bit one dimensional. I really felt for Sadie, a woman who has suffered her own set of heartbreaks in the past, yet isn't really understood by her husband. She was a different kind of heroine to read about, which I enjoyed.
I would say that if you are looking for a different kind of read away from gushy romance or gory horror then to definitely give this a go. It is wonderfully old-fashioned and sweet- but thankfully never sickeningly so.
*This review also appears on Amazon.co.uk* show less
Though the title of the book initially appeared a bit frothy and the cover a little bit twee, the context of the novel is actually quite substantial, focusing on a Jewish immigrant family arriving in Britain during WWII. Jacob (Jack) Rosenblum becomes fixated with trying to be accepted by his new countrymen and fitting in as a proper `English gentleman' much to the show more chagrin of his long-suffering wife, Sadie. Moving from London to deepest Dorset, the book chronicles the trials and tribulations of the immigrants trying to gain acceptance, a theme which will no doubt resonate with a lot of readers.
The tone of this novel rather put me in mind of Alexander McCall Smiths books- gentle and thought provoking, despite the issues concentrated on. The plot is not fast-paced but becomes all the more appealing for that and as a reader you really get pulled into the story and experience Jack and Sadie's journeys and troubles along with them.
The characters are wonderfully written and retain a real sense of charm and whimsy with all of their funny little foibles. The only one I couldn't really feel a lot for was Elizabeth, Jack and Sadie's daughter, who did appear a little bit one dimensional. I really felt for Sadie, a woman who has suffered her own set of heartbreaks in the past, yet isn't really understood by her husband. She was a different kind of heroine to read about, which I enjoyed.
I would say that if you are looking for a different kind of read away from gushy romance or gory horror then to definitely give this a go. It is wonderfully old-fashioned and sweet- but thankfully never sickeningly so.
*This review also appears on Amazon.co.uk* show less
A simply lovely but subtly complicated book. Mr. Rosenblum wants nothing more passionately than to be a perfect English gentleman. The problem is, he's a Jewish immigrant, hopelessly out of place. Nonetheless he learns to dress, speak, and behave like a true Englishman. All he needs now is membership to a gold club...
This is a bittersweet comedy, or a very funny book of tragic history, depending on how you look at it. There's a wonderful marriage in the midst of this book, and a great focus on friendship. I plan to read The House at Tyneford.
This is a bittersweet comedy, or a very funny book of tragic history, depending on how you look at it. There's a wonderful marriage in the midst of this book, and a great focus on friendship. I plan to read The House at Tyneford.
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In its attention to the ways immigrants can become alienated from both their native and their adopted countries, Mr Rosenblum's List has much more to it than the nostalgic vision of Englishness suggested by its cover.
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wilfully eccentric little england (cosy read novels, england)
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jewish themed novels
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Author Information
9+ Works 2,887 Members
Natasha Solomons writes novels and screenplays. Her first book, Mr. Rosenblum's List was published in 2010. Her other books include The Novel in the Viola (also published as The House at Tyneford) and Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English. She is finishing a PhD in eighteenth-century poetry. (Bowker Author Biography)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English
- Original title
- Mr Rosenblum's List
- Original publication date
- 2010
- People/Characters
- Jack Rosenblum; Sadie Rosenblum; Elizabeth Rosenblum; a Dorset woolly pig; Curtis; Sir William Waegbert (show all 7); Bobby Jones
- Important places
- Dorset, England, UK; Germany; London, England, UK
- Important events
- World War II; Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
- Dedication
- On his ninetieth birthday, I promised my grandfather that I would dedicate my first novel to him. So, this is for Mr. P. E. Shields, O.B.E., 1910-2000. And for David, with love.
- First words
- Jack Rosenblum éteignit le poste de TSF et se renfonça dans son fauteuil en cuir.
Jack Rosenblum switched off the wireless and nestled back into his leather armchair. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Elizabeth referma la brochure, la glissa entre les pages du carnet de recettes et se hâta pour rattraper le vieil homme qui descendait la colline d'un pas ferme.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Elizabeth closed the leaflet, slipped it back inside the recipe book and hurried to catch up with the old man walking steadily down the hill. - Blurbers
- Paul Torday; Sadie Jones
- Original language
- English
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 833
- Popularity
- 32,969
- Reviews
- 47
- Rating
- (3.56)
- Languages
- 7 — Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 30
- ASINs
- 9
