Charlotte Mendelson invents a satisfying fairy tale starring a misfit teenager and a trio of elderly Hungarian ladies
Families, Charlotte Mendelson's delicious fourth novel confirms, are as unknowable from within as from without. Marina's is no exception. Westminster Court, the apartment building in which she has largely been raised, squats in a poky corner of unlovely Bayswater. Inside, it's a little patch of Hungary.
With her very English mother, Laura, she moved there to live with her maternal grandmother and two great-aunts after her father vanished. Rozsi, Zsuzsi and Ildi are refugees from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and their extravagant hand gestures, dramatic eyebrows and fondness for cold sour-cherry soup make them irresistible. "Dar-link!" they cry out in greeting, their accents dusting everything with "snow and fir and darkness".
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