Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English

by Natasha Solomons

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

At the start of World War II, Jack and Sadie Rosenblum flee Berlin for London with their baby daughter, Elizabeth. Upon arrival, Jack receives a pamphlet from the German Jewish Aid Committee on how to act like a proper Englishman. He follows it to the letter—Saville Row suits, the BBC, trips to Covent Garden, a Jaguar—and it works like a charm. The Rosenblums settle into a prosperous new life.

Just one item on the list eludes him: "An Englishman must be a member of a golf course." No golf course in England at the time will admit a Jew. But the list is now the guiding document in Jack's life, and he must check off the final item. So he decides to build his own golf club in the Dorset countryside. For the second time, Sadie leaves a home she loves. And despite ancient customs, British snobbery, mythical beasts, and a shrinking bank account, they triumph once again.

Release date: June 21, 2010

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 368

Sample

“My favorite book of the year…. The writing is utterly charming. Solomons does an excellent job of shaping these characters,
of presenting their flaws and their strengths, their humor and sadness, their complete will to survive, to thrive! It’s simply
gorgeous. This book made me laugh, cry, scream in frustration for these two people, and hug myself in rapturous contentment
at their successes. I feel as proud of Jack and Sadie as I’m sure Ms. Solomons does for her own grandparents… An unexpected
treasure.”


—Heather Fargis, Capricious Reader

“The plot has a happy fairy-tale quality about it, but the details are grimly realistic. The English, despite their fine speech
and refined manners, are brutal in their subtle forms of discrimination and exclusion. Natasha Solomons, who has based her
novel on the experience of her grandparents, tells their story with humor and compassion.”


—Barbara Fisher, Boston Globe

“Prepare to be seriously charmed…. A hilarious and touching first novel.”

—Kate Saunders, Times (London)


“The book contains a series of distinct parts that come together to create something beautiful…. Sadie’s sorrow produces beautiful
tender moments…. The setting also takes on a life of its own as Solomons paints detailed descriptions…. It’s a portrait tinged
with nostalgia for a lovely, simple place where an exile can finally find home.”


—Samantha Nelson, Onion A.V. Club

“Evocative…. A beguiling debut novel sure to appeal to the legion of fans of novels like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand.”


—Barbara Love, Library Journal (starred review)


“Written in a deceptively jaunty tone, one that covers but does not erase the fear of eternal wandering. Home, in the end,
takes the form of that most organic, simple, beautiful of British contributions: the cottage in the village (preferably in
Dorset), complete with flower garden, gate, and outdoor places to rest.”


—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

“A journey marked by both heartache and charm…. Solomons creates a world that is poignant, brutal, but also blessedly comic
in its depiction of any small town…. Drawing on her grandparents’ own postwar experience in England, Solomons honors the wrenching
task of recreating a life, but through a tale that is never far from being utterly charming in its proper English pluck.”


—Kim Ode, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English is warm and charming, a fairy tale set in idyllic English countryside. Solomons proves to be a skilled nature writer and
observer of people’s foibles.”


—Lucy Sussex, Sunday Age (Australia)


“Exquisite…. Funny and poignant…. Dazzling narrative provides the structure for a novel that shimmers with Jack’s unstoppable
optimism and Sadie’s grief upon leaving her former life and family…. Both comical and heartrending. A coming-of-age novel,
a novel of assimilation, a novel of huge dreams and strange Dorset myths…. Jack Rosenblum stands alone as heroic and unstoppable,
like Molly Brown, and the story blooms as vividly as Sadie’s rosebushes and challah. An absolutely marvelous novel, with writing
that spares no amount of talent on Ms. Solomons’s part.”


—The Review Broads

“The descriptions of England—as friend, adversary, and eventually home—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

“Solomons writes this story so light-heartedly and quirkily…. She treats with gentle comedy a topic more usually framed as
stark tragedy but does not let us forget what sort of life awaited those Jews who survived the Holocaust.”


—Kerryn Goldsworthy, Sunday Morning Herald (Australia)


“Solomons strikes the perfect note with simple, evocative metaphors…. A rare treat; a debut novel that is pretty much flawless.”

—Alyson Rudd, Times (London)


“Utterly charming and very funny.”

—Paul Torday, author of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

“Only a heart of stone could fail to fall in love with Jack Rosenblum, the unfailingly optimistic hero of Natasha Solomons’s
enchanting debut novel…. Based on Solomons’s own grandfather’s experiences and shot through with her love of the countryside
and country folk, this is a touching, funny, and unforgettable slice of English eccentricity that looks sure to be a massive
word-of-mouth success.”


—Morag Lindsay, Aberdeen Press and Journal

“This is Natasha Solomons’s first novel, although nothing in her writing reveals this to be so. Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English is an endearing and funny story of a couple disconnected from their home and one another. It negotiates the very contemporary
question of how to be free in a land that isn’t your own and how to fit in when you’ve lost most of what makes you fit. It
also deals with the more particular issue of how to defeat resident moles and their molehills when building a golf course
in your backyard.”


—Emma Young, Age (Australia)


“A delightful tale with comic overtones told in the engaging manner of a seasoned author…. The author’s masterful writing
style, combining identifiable human emotions with wit and irony, left me looking forward to reading her next book.”


—Charles Shea LeMone, Roanoke Times

“It’s an unforgettably powerful scene and one that means that, while Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English is every bit as charming and funny as its pretty cover claims, it has a tragic undertow.”


—Wendy Holden, Daily Mail (London)


“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…. Much of the delight in this novel stems from Solomons’s feeling for
types of traditional knowledge that are on the verge of obsolescence. She cherishes old recipes, fading local legends, and
the evocative vocabulary of the natural world. Unsurprisingly, it is only as Jack ceases wrestling with the landscape and
begins to appreciate its peculiarities that his course gradually emerges.”


—Thomas Marks, Daily Telegraph

“A treat of a book…. The light yet poignant tone makes for an unusual, richly comic novel.”

—Catherine Taylor, Guardian

“A subtle and moving examination of the dilemma faced by immigrants to modern Britain…. In its attention to the ways immigrants
can become alienated from both their native and their adopted countries, Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English has much more to it than the nostalgic vision of Englishness suggested by its cover.”


—Edmund Gordon, Observer

“Solomons enriches the comedy of pride and prejudice with Jack’s reality-proof lyricism and moving glimpses of his shattered
German past.”


—Boyd Tonkin, Independent (UK)


“There is much more contained within these covers than its appearance denotes. I did feel it became sentimental towards the
end but, for a first novel, it is a fine achievement.”


—Sue Bond, Courier Mail (Australia)


“What impresses most about this debut is how perfectly pitched it is. While Jack dreams of becoming a Great British caricature,
Natasha Solomons preserves him, with warmth and humanity, from that fate…. Sprinkled with a hint of magic, this debut is a
delight.”


—Susan Hill, Daily Mail (London)


“The plot might sound simplistic but the sentiment behind Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English is sea-deep. As Sadie battles depression and wallows in a past imbued by recipes from home, Jack enters his own world just
as determinably. This is a first novel for Solomons but she maturely grapples with the feelings of not only Sadie and Jack
but everyone tangled up in the Holocaust and the harrowing, and ongoing, memories that haunt the life of refugees everywhere.
On top of that, Solomons celebrates the power of community to ultimately create an uplifting work that you will want to reread
as soon as you turn the last page.”


—Diana Riley, Sunday Express (Scotland)


It will be cloudy and dull this evening and tonight with periods of rain; the rain being moderate or heavy in many districts.
Fog will be extensive on high ground with fog patches along the south coast. Tomorrow, more general and heavy rain will spread
from the south-west with temperatures of approximately fifty-seven degrees. That concludes the weather summary; a further
news bulletin may be heard at a quarter to…

Jack Rosenblum switched off the wireless and nestled back into his leather armchair. A beatific smile spread across his face
and he closed his eyes. “So there is to be more rain,” he remarked to the empty room, stretching out his short legs and giving
a yawn. He was unconcerned by the dismal prognosis; it was the act of listening to the bulletin that he savoured. Each evening
during the weather forecast he could imagine he was an Englishman. When the forecast was stopped through the war he grieved
on behalf of the British, aware what loss this absence would inflict, and when it started again he listened in religiously,
happily considering all the Englishmen and women hearing “light drizzle on high ground” at the same instant as he. Through
the daily weather reports he felt himself to be part of a nation; the prediction may be sleet in Scotland and sunshine in the West Midlands but the ritual of the weather forecast united them all. The national preoccupation had been
rightfully restored and in his soul Jack rejoiced.


He stared out of the window, watching the rain trickle down the pane. Beyond, the tatty grass of the garden ran up to a dilapidated
fence, and on the other side was the heath. No one had mended the fence. It had been falling down since 1940 but there was
no new wood with which to mend it. He could have found some on the black market with a little Schwarzgeld, but the simple truth was that he, like everyone else in London, had ceased to notice the shabbiness of his surroundings.
Over the last ten years the city had slowly decayed, cracks appearing in even the smartest façade, but the people of London,
like the spouse of a fading beauty, had grown far too familiar with the city to notice her decline. It was left for those
who had returned from exile to observe with dismay the drab degeneration of the once great capital. London was blackened and
smoke stained, with great gaping holes strewn with rubble.


*   *   *

Jack was not like the other refugees who, in the most part, were quite happy to build their own tiny towns within the great
city. He agreed with his neighbours that the role of the Jew was not to be noticed. If no one noticed you, then you became
like a park bench, useful if one thought about it, but you did not stand out. Assimilation was the secret. Assimilation. Jack had said the word so often to himself, that he heard it as a hiss and a shibboleth. He was tired of being different;
he did not want to be doomed like the Wandering Jew to walk endlessly from place to place, belonging nowhere. Besides, he
liked the English and their peculiarities. He liked their stoicism under pressure; on the wall in his factory he kept a copy
of a war poster emblazoned with the Crown of King George and underneath the words “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Their city was
crumbling all around them; the peopled dressed in utility clothing, there were only wizened vegetables, dry brown bread and
miserable slivers of bacon from Argentina in the shops, yet the men shaved and dressed for dinner and their wives served them
the grey food on their best patterned china. All the British were alike—even as the Empire collapsed and the pound tumbled,
they maintained that they were at the centre of the world and anyone coming to England must be here to learn from them. The
idea that the traveller from India or America might have some wisdom to impart was ludicrous. The British stood tall in their
trilby or bowler hats and discussed the weather.


Jack had lived amongst them for fifteen years. He felt like one of those newfangled anthropologists employed by Mass Observation,
but while they were busy surveying the population, listening in on the conversations of coal miners in pubs and on buses,
housewives and earls in Lyons Corner Houses, Jack was only interested in one sub-species: the English Middle Class. He wanted
to be a gentleman not a gent. He wanted to be Mr. J.M. Rosenblum.


*   *   *

Jack aspired to be an Englishman from the very first moment he and his wife Sadie disembarked at Harwich in August 1937. Dazed
from the journey and clutching a suitcase in each hand, they had picked their way along the gangplank, trying not to slip
in their first English drizzle. Sadie’s brand-new shoes made her unsteady, but she was determined to arrive in her host nation smartly dressed and not like a schnorrer. Her dark-blond hair was plaited into neat coils around her ears and Jack noticed that she’d carefully masked the heavy circles
beneath her eyes with powder. She wore a neat woollen two-piece, the skirt a trifle loose round her middle. Elizabeth, barely
a year old and unaware of the significance of the moment, slept on her mother’s shoulder, tiny fingers curled in Sadie’s plaits.
All the refugees, with their piles of luggage, clutches of small sobbing children and pale-faced Yiddish speaking grandparents,
were herded into haphazard queues. Seeing others with parents, cousins and brothers-in-law, Jack experienced a gut-punch of
guilt. Acid rose in his throat and he gave a small burp. It tasted of onions. He cursed in German under his breath. Sadie
had made chopped liver and onion sandwiches for the train ride into France. He hated raw onions; they always repeated on him.
That whole journey, he knew he ought to be mulling over the momentous nature of their trip but he watched with an odd detachment
as Germany vanished in a blur—God knew if they’d ever see it again. “Heimat”—the idea of home and belonging—was gone. And yet as the train rushed through Holland and France, all Jack could think about
was the taste of onions. Sure enough, he arrived in England in his best suit, shoes polished to a gleam, hair neatly trimmed
and his breath reeking.


The refugees had waited beside the dock in the falling rain, none daring to complain (they’d learned the hard way to fear
the whims of bureaucrats). A man walked along the lines, pausing to talk and pass out pamphlets. Jack watched his progress
with fascination. He had the straight back of an Englishman and the self-assurance of a headmaster amongst a gaggle of unruly first-form boys—even the immigration policeman nodded deferentially on asking him a question. Jack admired rather
than envied elegance in other men. Jack himself was slight with soft blue irises (hidden behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles)
and sandy hair receding rapidly into baldness. He rued his small feet, which turned inwards ever so slightly. When standing
still, he always had to remember to turn his feet out, to avoid looking pigeon-toed.


Reaching Jack, the man handed him a dusky blue pamphlet entitled While you are in England: Helpful Information and Friendly Guidance for every Refugee. He gave another, identical, to Sadie.


“Welcome to England. I’m from the ‘German Jewish Aid Committee.’ Please study this with great care.”

Jack was so taken aback that this man with his twirling moustache was both an Englishman and a Jew that he stuttered—quite
unable to talk. The man gave a tired sigh and switched effortlessly into German.


“Willkommen in England. Ich bin—”

Jack shook himself out of his stupor. “Sank you, most kindly. I will learn it hard.”

The man beamed his approval. “Yes, jolly good.” He pointed to the pages in Jack’s hands. “Rule number two. Always. Speak.
English. Even halting English is better than German.”


Jack nodded dumbly, carefully storing this piece of advice.

“And this? He will truly tell me everything that I must be knowing?”

The man smiled tightly, impatient to be moving down the lines. “Yes. It tells you everything you need to know about the English.”

Jack clasped the flimsy pamphlet in trembling hands. He glanced along the rows of refugees sitting on travel trunks, nibbling
apples or glancing at newspapers in half a dozen languages. Did they not realise that they had just been handed a recipe for
happiness? This leaflet would tell them—Jews, Yids and Flüchtlinge—how to be genuine Englishmen. The booklet fell open upon the list and Jack read avidly, his lips mouthing the words, “Rule
one: Spend your time immediately in learning the English language…”


*   *   *

Jack spent his first few months in London living according to the rules set out in Helpful Information. He took English lessons; he never spoke German on the upper decks of buses and joined no political organisations, refusing
to sign a petition for the repositioning of a tram stop, in case later it could be misinterpreted as subversive. He never
criticised government legislation and would not allow Sadie to do so either, even when they had to register with the local
police as “enemy aliens.” He obeyed the list with more fervour than the most ardent Bar Mitzvah boy did the laws of Kashrut, and it was whilst adhering to it, that he had an unexpected piece of good luck.


Sadie had sent him out to buy a rug or a length of carpet to make their flat above Solly’s Stockings on Commercial Road a
bit more homely and Jack strolled along Brick Lane, idly sucking the salt crystals off a pretzel. He was aware that he ought
to be eating an iced bun, but as he recited item number nine, “An Englishman always ‘buys British’ wherever he can,” he consoled
himself that in this shetetl buns were hard to come by. It was a brisk morning and the steam from the beigel shops hovered in the atmosphere like bread-scented
smog. Boys peddled newspapers, trolley-bus conductors yelled for passengers going to “Finchley-Straße” and stallholders hustled for business,
from tables sprawled along the uneven pavement. The air was thick with Yiddish, and Jack could almost imagine himself back
in Schöneberg. With a shake of his head to drive away this stray homesick thought, he scoured the stands for carpets. He spied
clocks and watches (ticking or with their innards spewing out), barrels of herring, heimische cucumbers, lettuces, a broken hat stand and then, at last, a length of mint green carpet. He tossed his half-eaten pretzel
into the gutter for the pigeons and pointed to the roll.


“Him. The green carpet. Is he British?”

The stallholder frowned in puzzlement, his usual sales patter forgotten.

Impatient, Jack flipped over the roll to inspect the underside and to his delight saw a Wilton stamp and the Royal Warrant
of His Majesty the King.


“Super! I take it all, please-thank-you.”

“Right you are. I got more if you want it, guv? A bloomin’ trailer load.”

Jack thought for a minute. On the one hand, he had only ten pounds to his name. On the other, he could see the potential in
selling on the rest of the carpet, if he could get a good price. He glanced back at the Royal Warrant—surely this was a sign?


“Yes, all right. I take everything. I pay two pounds and I must be lending this trailer.”

Sadie was appalled when Jack returned home with twenty rolls of carpet in shades from mint to mustard and magenta. For a week
Elizabeth crawled through carpet tunnels, and they all perched on carpet benches in the evening to listen to the wireless—but that trailer load of carpet marked the beginning of Rosenblum’s Carpets. At first Jack acted as a middleman,
selling on remaindered stock at a premium to other refugees looking to add homely touches to squalid apartments, but soon
he realised that there was enough demand for him to open a small factory right there in the East End.


*   *   *

Sadie observed her husband easing into their new life with a mixture of wonder and concern. She knew that the neighbours whispered
about him behind his back, calling him a deliberate assimilator. As though he was guilty of some silent betrayal.


For her part, Sadie felt off balance in this new place. She disliked leaving the safety of the East End, and rarely strayed
beyond the boundary of the Finchley Road. Jack informed her that it was not done to shake hands with strangers on omnibuses
or in tramcars (for which she was grateful, having been disconcerted by the hostile stares she received on formally greeting
every passenger in the courteous Germanic way). Now reassured that she understood the customs, she agreed to take the bus
into the West End with him. There was only one seat downstairs, beside a rotund woman whose doughy face was crowned by an
enormous hat decorated with butterflies on wires. Insisting that Sadie took the seat, Jack climbed the stairs to the top deck
in search of another. The conductor bustled round dispensing tickets. Sadie stiffened. Jack always bought the tickets—his
English was wunderbar and more to the point, he had all the money.


“Where to, madam?” said the conductor, reaching her seat and jangling his box.

Sadie gave a timid smile and pointed at the ceiling. “The Lord above, he will pay.”


The conductor spluttered in wordless outrage, and Sadie felt the pudgy woman beside her swivel and stare, the butterflies
on her hat wobbling as she sniggered.


When at home Jack explained her mistake, Sadie couldn’t help feeling that the English language was deliberately designed to
confound outsiders. She refused to speak another word to him in that verdammt tongue for the rest of the afternoon, and since he would not chat in German, they sulked side by side in silence, until Jack
went out. He insisted that they spoke only English (something in that cursed pamphlet for sure) but speaking with her husband
in her disjointed newcomer’s tongue transformed him into a stranger. He looked the same, but the easy intimacies were lost.


He’d already changed his name. He was Jakob when she fell in love with him, and Jakob when she married him, but when a clerk
wrote down “Jak” on his British visa, he took it as a sign.


Sadie perched on the uncomfortable settee sipping a cup of black coffee. There was a murmur as Elizabeth woke from her nap,
and then a little cry, “Mama. Mama!”


Sadie put down her cup, spilling a few drops on the mauve rug in her hurry to fetch her daughter, and gave a little tut of
discontent that Jack had taught her baby to call her “Mama” instead of “Mutti.” Tonight, when he returned from the factory
and could mind Elizabeth, she would go to Freida Herzfeld for some Kaffee und Kuchen, kitchen gossip and illicit German chatter. Then she might go to the synagogue—the only place in this city where she felt
at home. There the words were the same: Hebrew in the grand schul on Oranienburger Straße and Hebrew in the handsome brick building behind Stepney Green. When she closed her eyes and listened to the deep song of
the cantor, she imagined herself back in Berlin with her mother beside her in the women’s gallery fussing as to whether Emil
was behaving himself in the room below. Sadie could almost make out the off-key intonations of Papa as he mumbled his way
through the service.


*   *   *

Rosenblum’s Carpets quickly outgrew its cramped workshop and expanded into premises off Hessel Street Market, until it was
the largest carpet factory in London’s East End, supplying some of the best middling hotels in the city. Half the men in the
Rosenblums’ street were gone, and goodness knew where—Canada? The Isle of Man? Even Australia, if the rumours were true.


The police came for you at dawn. It was a haphazard system, and sometimes if you were out they never came back. Sadie fretted
that Jack would be taken, and to humour her, he agreed to this unconscionably early walk to the factory. He never actually
believed they would take him, after all, he was an almost-Englishman applying through proper channels to become a genuine
citizen (and he could finish The Times crossword in under two hours, which Jack was sure must be some sort of record). But when he arrived at the factory that September
morning, he realised he’d forgotten his breakfast. Sadie always packed him a paper bag with matzos and a slither of rubbery
cheese from his weekly ration, as well as a thermos of foul smelling coffee. His stomach growled.


“Mistfink,” cursed Jack, resorting to German in his exasperation.


He pictured the brown bag on the kitchen table and decided to go back for it. He trotted the half-mile back home.


The police were waiting for him on the doorstep. Jack didn’t even try to turn around. They’d found him and it wouldn’t be
British to run like some coward-criminal.


*   *   *

The stench from urinals always brought it back—one whiff of ammonia and mothballs and he was back in 1940 in a makeshift cell
in a London police station with five other refugees all facing internment, and all complaining loudly about cold benches and
haemorrhoids. Jack had not joined in the discussion; he’d sat with his head in his hands and wondered how it was that he,
the most promising Englishman of all his acquaintance, could still be labelled a “class B enemy alien” (possible security
risk) and arrested. With his knowledge of marmalade and Royal Family history going back to Ethelred the Unready, it scarcely
seemed possible that he could be anything other than a “class C” (loyalty to the British cause not in question).


Jack couldn’t understand how this had happened. He’d obeyed the rules to the letter and they’d still taken him—clearly the
points in Helpful Information weren’t enough to make a chap blend in. He fished out the pamphlet and began to make his very first addendum:


Spend your time immediately in learning the English language and its correct pronunciation. Have done so but it is not so easy. Even English lessons do not assist. Cursed German accent IMPOSSIBLE to lose.


Refrain from speaking German in the streets and in public conveyances and in public places such as restaurants. Talk halting
English rather than fluent German—and do not talk in a loud voice. (Unless talking to foreigners when it is the done thing to shout). Do not read German newspapers in public. Do not read them AT ALL or you will be considered a “class A threat” and a spy.


Do not criticise any government regulation, nor the way things are done over here. Very hard to manage at times like this. The freedom and liberty of england are now given to you. Never forget this point.


Jack snorted. Loyal as he was, he couldn’t help but notice that his was a funny sort of freedom. With a sigh, he realised
that this very thought was perilously close to criticism, and turned to the next point.


4.  Do not join any political organisations.

It was points five and six that Jack pondered the most. While useful for the newly arrived refugee, Jack now realised that
they were in serious need of clarification.


5.  Do not make yourself conspicuous by speaking loudly, or by your manner or dress. Don’t gesture with your hands when talking. Keep them stuck to your sides or the English will think you strange. . .