When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson

Shortlisted for the 2008 Women's Prize (formerly the Orange Prize) and a book of the year in The Observer, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The New Statesman and The Spectator

The Rubin family, everybody agrees, seems doomed to happiness.

Claudia Rubin is in her heyday. Wife, mother, rabbi and sometime moral voice of the nation, everyone wants to be near her at her eldest son's glorious February wedding. Until Leo becomes a bolter and the Rubin family begins to unravel.

When We Were Bad is a warm, poignant and true portrayal of a London family in crisis, in love, in denial and - ultimately - in luck.

Charlotte Mendelson has written several novels to great acclaim. Daughters of Jerusalem, was the winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Almost English was longlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. The Exhibitionist was longlisted for the 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction and nominated for the 2022/23 Comedy Women in Print Prize. She is also the author of the novel Love in Idleness, the nonfiction Rhapsody in Green, and is the gardening correspondent for The New Yorker. Charlotte lives in London, England.