When We Were Bad

From the Booker longlisted author of Almost English

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize

'The Rubin family, everybody agrees, seems doomed to happiness'

Claudia Rubin is in her heyday. Wife, mother, rabbi and sometime moral voice of the nation, everyone wants to be with her at her older son’s glorious February wedding. Until Leo becomes a bolter and the heyday of the Rubin family begins to unravel . . .

‘As intelligent as it is funny. A beautifully observed literary comedy as well as a painfully accurate description of one big old family mess’ Observer

‘Fast-paced and engaging. Brilliant, touching and true’ Naomi Alderman, Financial Times

‘Absolutely spellbinding, so funny, so moving, so totally believable’ Jacqueline Wilson

‘Intelligent and witty. The Rubin family may be a singular one but the delights and the difficulties its members have with sex and spirituality, food and domesticity, expectation and achievement, will have a universal appeal’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Funny and emotionally true, this is a comedy with the warmest of hearts and the most deliciously subversive of agendas’ Book of the Month, Marie Claire

When We Were Bad is a warm, poignant and true portrayal of a London family in crisis, in love, in denial and – ultimately – in luck..