Nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2008! An intelligent and funny novel about the highs and lows of family life from the award-winning writer of Love in Idleness and Daughters of Jerusalem.

Claudia Rubin is in her heyday. Wife, mother, rabbi and sometime moral voice of the nation, it is she whom everyone wants to be with at her older son’s glorious February wedding. Until Leo becomes a bolter and the heyday of the Rubin family begins to unravel . . .
His calm, married, more mature sister, Frances, tries to hold the centre together but the stresses, for Frances, force her to re-examine her own middle way and lead to a decision as shocking in its way as Leo’s has been.
Meanwhile, Claudia's husband Norman has, uncharacteristically, a secret to hide – a secret whose imminent unveiling he can do nothing about . . .
A warm, poignant and true portrayal of a London family in crisis, in love, in denial and – ultimately – in luck.
Paperback - 304 pages

'Charlotte Mendelson's third novel opens with the disastrous wedding of Leo Rubin, son of indomitable rabbi Claudia. The abruptly aborted nuptials give way to a series of personal crises affecting each member of the dysfunctional family. The Rubins, and their assorted foibles, flaws and neuroses, are at once unique and utterly recognisable. The Jewishness of Mendelson's novel belies its wide-ranging appeal, although such universalism can falter as she sometimes veers towards the irritatingly London-centric. A story weighted so heavily towards exploring motherhood might perhaps be accused of marginalising its male characters, but her extraordinary eye for human behaviour will endear readers to each and every Rubin. And for the most part her narrative is located in ordinary domestic spaces drawn with disturbing accuracy and filled by a marvellously eccentric array of characters, which emerge as its finest asset. Combining frankness with a sharp and intelligent humour, When We Were Bad is an irresistible treat'...The Guardian