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A review by nidhi2023
The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.
This is a pretty bad book. I picked it up because it was long listed for the women's prize, but the book was unreadable.
The plot of the book focuses on a family and takes place over a single weekend where the patriarch of the family, Ray, an artist, is having an art show after a long time. The family is composed of the father(Ray) and the mother (Lucia), two daughters(Leah and Jess), and a stepson (Patrick- the mother' son). The main characters also include one of the daughters boyfriends, and a married, female MP who the mother is having an affair with.
Ray is absolutely terrible- he has no redeeming quality, is a bad father and bad husband, pretty emotionally abusive throughout the whole story. He never gets any better. The other characters all want his approval (I have no idea why) and kind of suffer through the book.
I hated this book so much, because while I started out feeling bad for most of the other characters in the book, by the midway point I was starting to feel so angry at them for doing absolutely nothing to ever improve the situation. The entire book talks about people's efforts to tiptoe around the patriarch of their house and to attempt to get him to like them- to an extent where Lucia, who is objectively a better artist, gives up her art to keep peace in the house. He (and one of her daughters Leah) is also absolutely horrible to her while she recovers from cancer. He also cheats on her during this time.
There is absolutely no reason why any of them would want his approval, the book does not bother to lay down any logic as to why they want it either. It kinds just drags on and on about how terrible Ray is and how he is ruining everyones life, and has been doing it in the past. No one actually seems to be doing much about it though.
I DNF'd it at about the 60% mark,
The plot of the book focuses on a family and takes place over a single weekend where the patriarch of the family, Ray, an artist, is having an art show after a long time. The family is composed of the father(Ray) and the mother (Lucia), two daughters(Leah and Jess), and a stepson (Patrick- the mother' son). The main characters also include one of the daughters boyfriends, and a married, female MP who the mother is having an affair with.
Ray is absolutely terrible- he has no redeeming quality, is a bad father and bad husband, pretty emotionally abusive throughout the whole story. He never gets any better. The other characters all want his approval (I have no idea why) and kind of suffer through the book.
I hated this book so much, because while I started out feeling bad for most of the other characters in the book, by the midway point I was starting to feel so angry at them for doing absolutely nothing to ever improve the situation. The entire book talks about people's efforts to tiptoe around the patriarch of their house and to attempt to get him to like them- to an extent where Lucia, who is objectively a better artist, gives up her art to keep peace in the house. He (and one of her daughters Leah) is also absolutely horrible to her while she recovers from cancer. He also cheats on her during this time.
There is absolutely no reason why any of them would want his approval, the book does not bother to lay down any logic as to why they want it either. It kinds just drags on and on about how terrible Ray is and how he is ruining everyones life, and has been doing it in the past. No one actually seems to be doing much about it though.
I DNF'd it at about the 60% mark,