Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English

April 19, 2010
Screenwriter Solomons's debut novel is the pleasant, ripped-from-the-family-archives story of German exile Jack Rosenblum and his unlikely postwar quest to build a golf course in the Dorset countryside. Fresh off the boat and with a “Helpful Information and Friendly Guidance for Every Refugee” pamphlet in hand, Jack dives passionately into assimilation, starting a booming carpet business, buying his suits at Henry Poole and his hats at Lock of St. James, and avoiding his native tongue at all costs. And while he can afford golf clubs at Harrod's, he can't check off the last item on his list: join a golf club. On impulse, he buys a damp acreage and embarks on the final leg of his assimilation. Meanwhile, his wife, Sadie, obsesses over the past, churning out Baumtortes
and other confections. It's undeniably winsome, and while the pace is lackadaisical at best, the details of postwar Britain are nicely observed, and the narrative offers a sweet perspective on some very heavily traveled turf.

April 15, 2010
A Jewish immigrant goes to extreme lengths to become British in a bittersweet, uneven comic debut.

Handed a book of helpful hints on assimilation as he arrives in England from Berlin in 1937, Jack Rosenblum takes the list of suggestions to heart in this story based on the experience of the author's grandparents. Jack quickly establishes a successful carpet factory in London, which pays for his oh-so-English expenses: a fine house, a Savile Row suit, a Jaguar car. But money can't buy him what he craves most deeply, membership to an English golf club—undeclared racism keeps Jews tidily excluded from these. So Jack decides to construct his own golf course, on an idyllic plot of Dorset countryside. Neglecting his business and his sad wife, Jack hurls himself into the task, thereby discovering a different kind of Englishness colored by country characters, landscape, history and myth. Solomons' prose tips between the awkward and the rhapsodic in a meandering tale in which grave issues such as anti-Semitism, survival and ruin never seem to weigh too heavily. Setbacks mount, but fairy-tale turns of event and acts of loyalty mean the golf course is completed in time for the coronation of Elizabeth II, a crowning moment of achievement and acceptance for Jack Rose-in-Bloom.

A gentle, soft-focus affair that doesn't entirely avoid queasiness and clich in its efforts to charm.

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Starred review from July 1, 2010
As Jewish refugees from Berlin who had obtained exit visas to Britain in 1937, Jack and Sadie Rosenblum have a lot for which to be thankful. Even a brief imprisonment as an enemy alien does little to dampen Jack's ardor for all things British or shorten his list of rules to live by to become more truly English. But while success comes to Jack in the form of a booming carpet business, Savile Row suits, a beloved Jaguar, and a Cambridge-bound daughter, one mark of the true Englishman still eludes him: the genteelly anti-Semitic British place Jewish quotas on golf club membership. So Jack uproots Sadie and moves her to the Dorset countryside, where a thatched cottage and a large acreage beckon him. Armed with a course design guide by Bobby Jones, Jack cheerfully sets out to build single-handedly the finest golf course in England in time for the new queen's coronation. VERDICTMix some eccentric villagers with evocative descriptions of English gardens and Jewish baking and you have a beguiling debut novel sure to appeal to the legion of fans of novels like Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows's "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society"and Helen Simonson's "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand"—Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

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