Book Review: *Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English* by Natasha Solomons

Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons

Back-of-the-book blurb:  At the outset of World War II, Jack Rosenblum, his wife Sadie, and their baby daughter escape Berlin, bound for London. They are greeted with a pamphlet instructing immigrants how to act like “the English.” Jack acquires Saville Row suits and a Jaguar. He buys his marmalade from Fortnum & Mason and learns to list the entire British monarchy back to 913 A.D. He never speaks German, apart from the occasional curse. But the one key item that would make him feel fully British -membership in a golf club-remains elusive. In post-war England, no golf club will admit a Rosenblum. Jack hatches a wild idea: he’ll build his own..

It’s an obsession Sadie does not share, particularly when Jack relocates them to a thatched roof cottage in Dorset to embark on his project. She doesn’t want to forget who they are or where they come from. She wants to bake the cakes she used to serve to friends in the old country and reminisce. Now she’s stuck in an inhospitable landscape filled with unwelcoming people, watching their bank account shrink as Jack pursues his quixotic dream

She Is Too Fond of Books’ review:  I’d like you to meet two friends of mine, Jack and Sadie Rosenblum; they are delightful, quirky, honest, and flawed.  I love them!

We didn’t always get along.  When I first met them, I didn’t really understand their complexities of their situation – Jack was a carpet saleman who up and left their home in London to follow his dream of building a golf course.  Sadie went with him, not truly embracing and supporting his dream, but not protesting either.  I was a little frustrated with each of them.

As I got to know them, I learned what drove each of them.  Jack had been trying for years to assimilate into the ways of his new home; he fastidiously made lists and tried to emulate the perfect English gentleman.  The one item that eludes him is membership in a golf club; he is excluded because of his jewish background.  With dogged determination he decides to build his own golf course, to finally complete his list; he seems destined to leave his heritage in the dust.

While not exactly living in the past, Sadie’s world is heavy with a type of survivor’s guilt.  Years ago, when she and Jack escaped Berlin, she left her mother and younger brother behind.  They haunt her in her dreams and in her memories, which she tries to capture and hold on to.  Some of my favorite passages are of Sadie and her memories:

Unless she looked at the photograph, Sadie could no longer quite recall her brother’s face – it was like he was staring back at her through a bowl of water.  She couldn’t remember whether his eyes were blue or grey.  The only thing worse than remembering, she decided, was starting to forget.

When they move into the cottage in Dorset, Sadie scrubs it from top to bottom, erasing all signs of its previous occupants, and thinking, “I don’t have space for other people’s memories.”

While Jack attempts to turn the inhospitable Bulbarrow hillside into a first-class golf course, Sadie doesn’t ask the earth to bend to her vision of what it should be:

Sadie neither planted nor weeded; Hitler had declared the Jews weeds and plucked them out wherever he found them.  She knew that a plnat was only a weed if unwanted by the gardener, so she refused to move a single one, and they sprouted up wherever they wanted, between flagstones on the terrace or in a riotous mass in the unruly beds.

Sadie chases her memories, and Jack chases his dreams.  Are both elusive, impossible to capture?  Not according to Jack, who believes that “almost impossible is still possible.”

The village is filled with people as odd as Sadie and Jack, and Solomons captures their every move with the same sense of hyperbole.  Here the townsfolk have gathered to watch Jack remove the molehills from the grounds of his proposed golf course:

They clapped as the pulleys lifted the tufts right off the ground and groaned when the system faltered and deposited its buckets of water over him.  Binoculars were passed between family and friends to afford a better view.  No one offered to help.  It seemed to them that here was a man devoted to a unique and solitary calling.  They considered him to be somewhere between a prophet and a lunatic.  Some wondered if, like Noah or Moses, he was compelled by the voice of God.  Others were convinced he was a madman, but as long as he was not dangerous, they were happy to eat egg sandwiches and ginger cake and watch the small man move piles of earth as the sunlight shone off his polished head.

And, like the sunlight shining off Jack’s head, Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English illuminates the best and worst of humanity.  This bittersweet fable of a story makes for a fun and satisfying read.  Never have I rooted so hard for the underdog.

About the author:  Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English is the debut novel from Natasha Solomons, who was inspired by her own memories of her grandparents and their English cottage purchased with restitution money from Germany.  Her novel was published in the UK as Mr. Rosenblum’s List or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman.  More information about Natasha Solomons and her work can be found on the author’s website.  She’s currently editing her next novel, titled The Novel in the Viola; I’m looking forward to meeting the characters who live inside that book!