The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson

⭐⭐

What do you do when you promised to write truthful reviews and the book you couldn't wait to read has let you down? When you met the author at a book festival and loved the author’s personality and ideas but her writing turned out to be indecisive, confusing, and irritating? « The Exhibitionist» is about the psychological and emotional damage a toxic parent can unleash on his/her family. The dynamics in such families was well researched by the author and each character had a distinctive role to play. From personal experience, I could recognise the traits of toxic parents who enmesh their children in a web of lies, and emotional and financial manipulation to gain control, to boost their low self-esteem and their narcissistic egoes. These types of parents are emotionally immature and focused on enmeshment rather than intimacy, which means they attribute rigid roles to family members in order to create an identity for themselves and for others. This part was very well described in the story. And Charlotte Mendelson clearly showed how family members need to stay in their role, for fear of reprisals (silent treatment, shouting, guilt-tripping, endless tears, being ostracised temporarily). With multiple siblings, there is always the golden child (Leah), the one that gets the positive projections; a scapegoat (Patrick and Jess) who becomes the identified problem in the family; the mascot or fixer, able to make light of the tension or diffuse it (in this case, it was the mother). At the core, one of the parents is the narcissist (the dad) and the other one is the enabler(the mam) who keeps these patterns and behaviors in place.

However, it is so well researched that the characters became caricatural and stereotyped taking away from authenticity. The dialogues in the book were pointless and frustrating with mid-sentences not finished, with a lot of « hmm » and « ….. » in them. They had no other function but to add ink to the page, I felt. They didn't add layers to the story nor did they link scenes efficiently. It was quite annoying. Mendelson's style is powerful at times, rhythmic. The inner turmoil of the characters was so elegantly written, with similes and metaphors linked to nature; it feels raw. Yet, some of the sentences' structures were confusing at times and required a lot of re-reading. Maybe the language was too witty for me or was meant to literally echo the chaos of the house. I just didn’t buy it. I often lost the thread of who was speaking or thinking and who the sentence was referring to as the author uses different points of view within the same scene and I had to readjust the scene and reread it to grasp who was speaking then. Also, the story is padded with a lot of scenes that would never happen in real life. The trigger points were too far-fetched and really not in touch with reality. There was a lot of humour in the narratives and it was a relief from the tension with a hint of sarcasm from the authors too, which I really enjoyed. Overall, I am disappointed. But this has not deterred me from reading Charlotte’s other novels « When We Were Bad » and «The Daughters of Jerusalem » (which I heard is her favorite). I am sorry I can’t give it more than 2 stars. However, this does not take away from Charlotte Mendelson's skills. She is a fantastic talker and her passion for her characters is contagious when she is interviewed. This book was simply not her best shot.