-
Seasonal Offer:
This title is part of our Seasonal Offers promotion.
Mr. Rosenblum's List
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'Prepare to be seriously charmed.' (The Times )
'The light yet poignant tone makes for an unusual, richly comic novel...a treat of a book.' (Guardian )
'An affectionate portrait of a spirited man trying to find a little corner of the world where he can truly belong...[Solomons] successfully treads the fine line between comedy and the precarious plight of refugees in an entertaining tale that has resonances in contemporary Britain.' (Herald )
'a subtle and moving examination of the dilemma faced by immigrants to modern Britain'. (Observer )
'a tender exploration of the nature of home'. (Marie Claire )
'written with and skill, humour and sympathy' (The Lady )
'[Solomons] has an exceptional feel for the Dorset countryside.' (Country Life )
'A delightful tale of one man's determination to fulfil his dream.' (Stylist )
'delightful debut...Solomon's narrative has shades of both P.G. Wodehouse and Isabel Allende...There are also echoes of Jez Butterworth's play Jerusalem in this whimsical novel's deep seam of inquiry into the nature of Englishness.' (TLS )
'almost irritatingly impressive...she strikes the perfect note with simple, evocative metaphors. I was forced to accept that this was a rare treat; a debut novel that is pretty much flawless...' (The Times )
'Sprinkled with a hint of magic, this debut is a delight.' (Daily Mail )
'The descriptions of England - as friend, adversary and eventually homne - are exquisite. Jack Rosenblum, a foolish, deeply sympathetic protagonist, is exasperating and admirable in equal measure. A touching, surprising and satisfying read.'
(Sadie Jones, author of The Outcast )'Utterly charming and very funny'
(Paul Torday, author of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen )'In her charming debut, Natasha Solomons folds together Jewish baking, golf and Dorset folklore to create a singular comic confection... Solomons crafts a fine pastoral comedy from Jack's eccentric endeavours to reshape the land and from his encounters with rustic labourers who seem to have absconded from the pages of a Hardy novel... Sadie provides a touching counterpoint to the comedy... Much of the delight in this novel stems from Solomons' feeling for types of traditional knowledge that are on the verge of obsolescence.'
(Telegraph )'The light yet poignant tone makes for an unusual, richly comic novel...a treat of a book.' (Guardian )
'An affectionate portrait of a spirited man trying to find a little corner of the world where he can truly belong...[Solomons] successfully treads the fine line between comedy and the precarious plight of refugees in an entertaining tale that has resonances in contemporary Britain.' (Herald )
'a subtle and moving examination of the dilemma faced by immigrants to modern Britain'. (Observer )
'a tender exploration of the nature of home'. (Marie Claire )
'written with and skill, humour and sympathy' (The Lady )
'[Solomons] has an exceptional feel for the Dorset countryside.' (Country Life )
'A delightful tale of one man's determination to fulfil his dream.' (Stylist )
'delightful debut...Solomon's narrative has shades of both P.G. Wodehouse and Isabel Allende...There are also echoes of Jez Butterworth's play Jerusalem in this whimsical novel's deep seam of inquiry into the nature of Englishness.' (TLS )
'almost irritatingly impressive...she strikes the perfect note with simple, evocative metaphors. I was forced to accept that this was a rare treat; a debut novel that is pretty much flawless...' (The Times )
'Sprinkled with a hint of magic, this debut is a delight.' (Daily Mail )
Product Description
List item 2: Never speak German on the upper decks of London buses.
Jack Rosenblum is five foot three and a half inches of sheer tenacity. He's writing a list so he can become a Very English Gentleman.
List item 41: An Englishman buys his marmalade from Fortnum and Mason.
It's 1952, and despite his best efforts, his bid to blend in is fraught with unexpected hurdles - including his wife. Sadie doesn't want to forget where they came from or the family they've lost. And she shows no interest in getting a purple rinse.
List item 112: An Englishman keeps his head in a crisis, even when he's risking everything.
Jack leads a reluctant Sadie deep into the English countryside in pursuit of a dream. Here, in a land of woolly pigs, bluebells and jitterbug cider, they embark on an impossible task...
Jack Rosenblum is five foot three and a half inches of sheer tenacity. He's writing a list so he can become a Very English Gentleman.
List item 41: An Englishman buys his marmalade from Fortnum and Mason.
It's 1952, and despite his best efforts, his bid to blend in is fraught with unexpected hurdles - including his wife. Sadie doesn't want to forget where they came from or the family they've lost. And she shows no interest in getting a purple rinse.
List item 112: An Englishman keeps his head in a crisis, even when he's risking everything.
Jack leads a reluctant Sadie deep into the English countryside in pursuit of a dream. Here, in a land of woolly pigs, bluebells and jitterbug cider, they embark on an impossible task...
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Jack and Sadie Rosenblum come to England from Germany in the 1930s. Jack is keen to become an Englishman and takes to heart the information about integrating which is detailed in a pamphlet he receives on landing in this country. As he attempts to put the advice into practice he adds his own notes to the list in the hope if writing a new set of guidelines. He insists his family speak English at all times and do their best to fit in and fade into the background. But his wife is not happy and misses her family back in Germany.
Jack builds up a successful carpet making business and his cup of happiness would be overflowing if he could only find a golf club which would allow him to be a member. He hasn't ever played golf himself but he knows the true Englishman plays golf and belongs to a golf club. Eventually he decides to build his own golf course and buys a tumbledown house in the wilds of Dorset with 60 acres of land attached. His aim is to have the course finished by the time of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953. In spite of Jack's tenacity and determination he has his work cut out as it is already the middle 1952.
The story of Jack's golf course and the way he is taken to the hearts of the Dorset villagers is well told. There are some marvellous humorous touches and some poignant happenings. Sadie remembers her lost childhood in the ramshackle house and the green countryside and loses herself in baking from her mother's recipe book. The villagers call them Mr and Mrs Rose-in-bloom even when Jack changes their name to Rose. But there are serpents in this Eden and not everything goes smoothly.
I enjoyed this heart-warming story and the way rural England is portrayed from the point of view of an outsider. There are eccentric characters such as the cider drinking Curtis - even he doesn't know how old he is; the truculent farmer Jack Basset and the scheming lord of the manor - Sir William Waegbert. There is also a great deal of kindness mixed in with the initial distrust of `foreigners'. The descriptions of the countryside are evocative and you can almost smell the scents of the greenery. If you want to know what a Dorset woolly-pig is and the recipe for a cider which will help you to see one - together with the recipe for Coronation Chicken - you will enjoy this charming story.
Jack builds up a successful carpet making business and his cup of happiness would be overflowing if he could only find a golf club which would allow him to be a member. He hasn't ever played golf himself but he knows the true Englishman plays golf and belongs to a golf club. Eventually he decides to build his own golf course and buys a tumbledown house in the wilds of Dorset with 60 acres of land attached. His aim is to have the course finished by the time of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953. In spite of Jack's tenacity and determination he has his work cut out as it is already the middle 1952.
The story of Jack's golf course and the way he is taken to the hearts of the Dorset villagers is well told. There are some marvellous humorous touches and some poignant happenings. Sadie remembers her lost childhood in the ramshackle house and the green countryside and loses herself in baking from her mother's recipe book. The villagers call them Mr and Mrs Rose-in-bloom even when Jack changes their name to Rose. But there are serpents in this Eden and not everything goes smoothly.
I enjoyed this heart-warming story and the way rural England is portrayed from the point of view of an outsider. There are eccentric characters such as the cider drinking Curtis - even he doesn't know how old he is; the truculent farmer Jack Basset and the scheming lord of the manor - Sir William Waegbert. There is also a great deal of kindness mixed in with the initial distrust of `foreigners'. The descriptions of the countryside are evocative and you can almost smell the scents of the greenery. If you want to know what a Dorset woolly-pig is and the recipe for a cider which will help you to see one - together with the recipe for Coronation Chicken - you will enjoy this charming story.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio Cassette
I loved Natasha Solomons' 'Novel in the Viola' - one of the best books I've read for years - and was surprised that this is completely different in tone and direction. It's the unusual, subtly clever story of Jack and Sadie, Jews who move to England from Germany and try VERY hard (or at least, Jack does) to fit in in rural Dorset.
Jack's obsession with 'fitting in' leads him to another compulsion, which drives the novel along - his all-consuming desire to build his own golf course, as he can't get admission into any all-English ones.
Jack's oft-thwarted journey to the final hole is both funny and heart-breaking. I have to say, I have never wanted a character to succeed so badly. I haven't read many novels recently where the main character was a man who isn't typically heroic and doesn't solve exciting crimes, so Jack was a bretah of fresh air. Sadie's loneliness and isolation contrasted perfectly with his never-say-die, optimistic attitude and their middle-aged love story is really sweet (and another breath of fresh air - I'm sick of good-looking professionals in their 20s who pervade everything in book-form at the moment).
You don't have to love golf to enjoy this weird and wonderful novel. You don't have to be Jewish. And you don't have to be typically English. But if you are fed up with the same-old crime, romance and daddy-beat-me-up-when-I-was-little novels, give this a try.
Jack's obsession with 'fitting in' leads him to another compulsion, which drives the novel along - his all-consuming desire to build his own golf course, as he can't get admission into any all-English ones.
Jack's oft-thwarted journey to the final hole is both funny and heart-breaking. I have to say, I have never wanted a character to succeed so badly. I haven't read many novels recently where the main character was a man who isn't typically heroic and doesn't solve exciting crimes, so Jack was a bretah of fresh air. Sadie's loneliness and isolation contrasted perfectly with his never-say-die, optimistic attitude and their middle-aged love story is really sweet (and another breath of fresh air - I'm sick of good-looking professionals in their 20s who pervade everything in book-form at the moment).
You don't have to love golf to enjoy this weird and wonderful novel. You don't have to be Jewish. And you don't have to be typically English. But if you are fed up with the same-old crime, romance and daddy-beat-me-up-when-I-was-little novels, give this a try.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Jack wants to join a golf club, but at every place he is turned down. No matter how many times he applies and no matter how successful he is, it is no good. The reason is because he is Jewish. But Jack knows what it is to be an Englishman, he has stuck faithfully to the pamphlet he was given upon arrival some twenty years earlier.
Jack and his wife Sadie with their young daughter, Elizabeth came to England in the 1930s, from Germany as Jewish refugees. They left behind everything and they cannot go back. When they land in this promised land, they are given a pamphlet which shows them what they need to do to become 'English'. Jack takes this as the gospel and follows all points, along the way adding a few more. It is at this point after being a succesful businessman, he wants to be able to join a golf club; that to him is the final success to become the epitome of an Englishman. If they will not have him, then he will build a golf course, a simple plan, but flawed in so many ways.
Sadie does not want to move from the city, down to the depths of the countryside, in Dorset. Away from what she has grown used to in twenty years, where she can still be part of the Jewish culture. But she goes, and Natasha Solomons shows a very fragile woman, who is at the point of a breakdown in my opinion, watch as her husband forges ahead with a very foolhardy plan. Sadie finds solace in the countryside and cooking which brings to life her past and suddenly a future seems possible.
The golf course, starts and stalls, the help comes and goes, and the locals begin to take Jack and Sadie into their small little community. But like all communities there are some who do not want to see success, especially from an outsider. And so the story changes and you have to keep reading to find out whether it all comes together in time for the Coronation, the time frame Jack has set himself.
A beautifully gentle book which I felt was so fragile whilst I was reading it, that the characters and the plot might break up in my hands. It is a book which makes you smile and cry, laugh and weep. It was interesting to get a perspective on a piece of history that I have read much about, and although this is borne in fiction here, research and thought has certainly gone into the plot. The details of the baking, the ramshackle house they live in, the beautiful countryside giving way to nature no matter how much interference there is from outsiders is in abundance in this book. I recommend it, especially in a year where we are very much focussing on all things 'English'.
Jack and his wife Sadie with their young daughter, Elizabeth came to England in the 1930s, from Germany as Jewish refugees. They left behind everything and they cannot go back. When they land in this promised land, they are given a pamphlet which shows them what they need to do to become 'English'. Jack takes this as the gospel and follows all points, along the way adding a few more. It is at this point after being a succesful businessman, he wants to be able to join a golf club; that to him is the final success to become the epitome of an Englishman. If they will not have him, then he will build a golf course, a simple plan, but flawed in so many ways.
Sadie does not want to move from the city, down to the depths of the countryside, in Dorset. Away from what she has grown used to in twenty years, where she can still be part of the Jewish culture. But she goes, and Natasha Solomons shows a very fragile woman, who is at the point of a breakdown in my opinion, watch as her husband forges ahead with a very foolhardy plan. Sadie finds solace in the countryside and cooking which brings to life her past and suddenly a future seems possible.
The golf course, starts and stalls, the help comes and goes, and the locals begin to take Jack and Sadie into their small little community. But like all communities there are some who do not want to see success, especially from an outsider. And so the story changes and you have to keep reading to find out whether it all comes together in time for the Coronation, the time frame Jack has set himself.
A beautifully gentle book which I felt was so fragile whilst I was reading it, that the characters and the plot might break up in my hands. It is a book which makes you smile and cry, laugh and weep. It was interesting to get a perspective on a piece of history that I have read much about, and although this is borne in fiction here, research and thought has certainly gone into the plot. The details of the baking, the ramshackle house they live in, the beautiful countryside giving way to nature no matter how much interference there is from outsiders is in abundance in this book. I recommend it, especially in a year where we are very much focussing on all things 'English'.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
I really wanted to like it but...
I really wanted to like this, but it is one of only a few books that I haven't managed to finish. I got about a quarter of the way through, wasn't really enjoying it, but soldiered... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Donna Clements
Very different from The Novel In The Viola.
I found the first bit of Jack's story quite interesting and would rather have read a book that took the plight of the Jews arriving in Britain in a more serious light, I found was... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Charlie&Molly
Wished it would never end !
Read it in one sitting ! ( albeit on a sunbed) a lovely heartwarming story, characters you'll take to your heart, unpredictable, funny, tearjerker. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Kindleaddict
Not funny, not charming
I save my one star reviews for books that I have been unable to finish. Reading reviews that described this book as charming and funny, I was quite looking forward to it. Read more
Published 6 months ago by pigsmayfly
Lovely, sad and amusing
Delightful story with humour and sadness. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend.I took it on holiday and it was excellent reading then but enjoyable at any time.
Published 7 months ago by Mrs. F. Harrington
Not bad
Not a bad liitle read. A Jewish holocaust survival novel based on real life events in the family history of the author Natasha Solomons. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Diana Foster
Weird and wonderful
I recently read Solomon's "A Novel in the Viola" and loved it, so was particularly eager to see if this novel retained a similar kind of magic. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Nicola F (Nic)
Mr Rosenblums list
A wonderful book that would be hard to put into a
particular literary category.
It's poignant and sad but at the same time endearing
and funny. Read more
particular literary category.
It's poignant and sad but at the same time endearing
and funny. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Soo
Reads like a list
It's a tedious read. It flits through the years with no discernable story except for Mr Rosenblum ticking off numbers on his list, 101 must get a suit fromm Savilee Row etc. Read more
Published 8 months ago by JS
A Must Read
A brilliant story. A terrific read - I've bought copies for all my friends. Having bought it for myself on the recommendation of a friend.
Published 8 months ago by Colleen
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
