Almost English Charlotte Mendelson by Charlotte Mendelson 9781447219972, 144721997X, B01FXI0VG6 instant download after payment.

In Charlotte Mendelson’s comic tale, a Hungarian teen swaps a flat full of female relatives for the dubious delights of an English boarding school.

In a tiny flat in West London, 16-year-old Marina lives with her emotionally delicate mother, Laura, and three ancient Hungarian relatives. Imprisoned by her family's crushing expectations and their fierce un-English pride, by their strange traditions and stranger foods, she knows she must escape. But the place she runs to makes her feel even more of an outsider.

"Novels about growing up have two great themes: loss of innocence and the forging of identity. With this sparky, sharp-eyed and  often painfully funny novel, her fourth,  Charlotte Mendelson (winner of the Somerset Maugham and John Llewellyn Rhys prizes and now on the Man Booker longlist) explores both through the story of a girl and a family openly based on her own experience."  -  Anne Chisholm, The Spectator

Charlotte Mendelson has had a long career in publishing as well as in writing: she first became a novelist while working as a copy editor for Jonathan Cape – a house with a blue-blooded Booker Prize pedigree – where she wrote at lunchtime. She now also teaches creative writing and,  being an avid horticulturist, is the gardening correspondent of the New Yorker.