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

2010 at 5am     Posted by Rebecca Schinsky

Published June 2010 by Reagan Arthur Books

So far, I have loved every Reagan Arthur book I’ve read.  The woman has impeccable taste, and the books she publishes are thought-provoking and beautifully written. Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English is no exception, and I’m starting to think I should just pack up a box of panties and ship them off to her post haste.

Jack Rosenblum and his wife Sadie flee from Berlin at the beginning of World War II and take their baby daughter Elizabeth to London. Upon arrival, they receive a pamphlet entitled “While you are in England: Helpful Information and Friendly Guidance for every Refugee.” The pamphlet provides suggestions that are essentially designed to make the refugees as invisible as possible, but Jack sees it as the rule book for becoming English. And that is his goal: to become a full-fledged Englishman.

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 follows the pamphlet’s suggestions right down to the most minute details and makes a full-time hobby of studying the English. He purchases all of the right clothing. He eats the right food. He uses the right slang. He tries to read the right books. He even builds a successful business from the ground up. Literally—it’s a carpet factory.  (Go ahead and groan. You know you want to.)

But no matter what he does, poor Jack can’t quite convince the English that he is one of them.

He never understood how, when he always obeyed the list to the letter, dressing in the uniform of the English gentleman, he was instantly identified as a rank outsider.

And this is never more obvious than when he applies to and is rejected by every last golf course around.

Unwilling to accept permanent status as an outsider, Rosenblum uproots his family and moves to the countryside, where he buys a falling-down house on hilly, rocky land and sets out to build a golf course of his very own. Unaware that he has become the laughingstock of the neighborhood, Rosenblum toils tirelessly, doing all of the work by hand, to finish his course in time for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation.

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.

He is thrilled when snobbish neighbors invite him over for dinner (of course, he doesn’t know he is there “solely for entertainment value”), and he continues to believe that if he can just assimilate a bit more, he’ll finally be a real Englishman.  Yes, it is obsession bordering on madness, but Rosenblum doesn’t see it that way, even when he begins to write letters to the famous golf course designer Bobby Jones, gradually revealing more and more intimate personal information, despite the lack of any response or encouragement.

Jack’s wife Sadie plays a relatively small role in the first half of the book, though she frequently registers her disapproval of Jack’s behavior and her disappointment in what she perceives as his desire to separate himself from his history and heritage. While Jack wants to move forward, Sadie wishes to hold onto the past, to remember the family she was torn from when she left Berlin. So she pulls out her photographs and her book of recipes, and one night, in a section called “cakes to make you remember,” she finds the recipe for a Baumtorte, which is comprised of many thin cakes stacked together.

Each cake was placed on top of another and then another until, when dawn came, there was a cake towering many feet high with a thousand layers of rings; every layer holding a memory.

The paragraphs that describe Sadie’s sadness and her baking of the Baumtorte are simply gorgeous, and they are what put me over the edge from liking to loving Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English.

Through Jack’s relentless pursuit of Englishness and Sadie’s longing for the past, Solomons explores issues of family, identity, foreignness, dreams, and history, and when Jack changes the family’s last name to Rose, and the villagers call him and Sadie the Rose-in-Bloom’s, she asks the age old question “What’s in a name?” quite elegantly.  Jack’s focus on becoming English makes him blind to the way others perceive him, and Sadie’s sadness colors her interpretation of, well, everything.

With all this, it could be easy to judge Jack Rosenblum or to write him off as nuts for chasing what seems to many to be “a ludicrous pipe dream,” but Solomons doesn’t do that, and she gently guides the reader away from doing it as well. Her subtly surrealist details and stunning ability to find just the right word or image to convey her characters’ experiences make Solomons’s book enjoyable, engaging, and just a little bit heartbreaking. And I loved it all…except the ending.

But that is a matter of my preferences, not an issue of quality or the story’s integrity. Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English is a lovely novel about the often less-than-lovely things that happen to us when we set out to be something other than what we are and the unexpected successes and sadness we encounter along the way. Solomons’ characters are sympathetic almost to a fault, which makes them their own comic relief, and she populates the Rosenblum’s new village with memorable characters who lighten the mood and make moving to the English countryside look like a pretty good decision.

If you want to know whether Jack finishes his golf course, you’ll have to find out for yourself, and I’m willing to bet it’s a ride you’ll enjoy. 4.25 out of 5.

This book was published in the UK as Mr. Rosenblum’s List. Visit Natasha Solomons’ blog for more information.