Reviews of The Crowded Bed

Reviews of The Crowded Bed by Mary Cavanagh
Published by Transita, January 2007
ISBN 978-1-905175-31-4

Kate Saunders - The Times 17th March 2007
This funny and dramatic first novel about the darkest of family secrets begins with Joe Fortune, a charismatic Jewish doctor, killing his father-in-law. Joe has good reasons for wanting Gordon dead – better reasons than your average murderer. The sanity of his adored wife, Anna, a fragile Botticelli blonde, may depend on it. Meanwhile, Joe must decide exactly how Jewish he wants to be. It is a tall story, but is told so artfully that there are genuine surprises.

Sharon Goforth (Ex-Libris) Independent BlogReviewer Ohio, USA
2007 - A Year in Review
The Best of the Best - Top 5 Books of 2007
Now to the hard part - deciding which books I enjoyed the most. This year it is especially difficult to choose, as there were so many books that were outstanding. But the following 5 books topped them all and are ones that will stay with me a very long time:
By the Lake by John McGahern
The Crowded Bed by Mary Cavanagh
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Spanish Bow by Andromeda Romano-Lax
An Ice-Cream War by William Boyd

Tim and Simon,The Big Green Book Shop, Wood Green london, N22
http://woodgreenbookshop.blogspot.com/
Despite what people tell you about bookselling being hard work, it's an honour to be able to see and read pretty much anything that you like (not on company time mind you), and I miss it badly. So to be sent these wonderful books has been a real treat for me, and I intend to give all the books I'm sent a chance. So thanks.There have been a couple recently that have really stood out for different reasons. One isn't published yet, but one is. The Crowded Bed by Mary Cavanagh (Transita 9781905175314)I started reading this on Sunday, and to be honest I wasn't sure if it was my kind of thing. But I was so wrong. This book is a belter. I was hooked and devoured it in 2 sittings. From the prologue, in which we watch Joe Fortune (our 'hero') murdering his father-in-law, we're then transported back to Joe's childhood. And there begins the story of how we get to his crime. The strength of the writer lies in her ability to take us from the past to the present and back again and still hold the story together so cleverly that you just have to know what happens next. I was both delighted to get to the end and sad that I'd finished it. This book has been picked up and recommended by Mostly Books amongst others, and rightly so. This is going eye level on our Big Green Favourites bookcase from day 1.

Elaine Simpson-Long
Independent BlogReviewer
www.randomjottings.typepad.com
Using the phrase 'a darn good read’ always seems a somewhat dismissive way to describe a book, and yet it IS a darn good read, in fact, a great read and deserves to sell lots of copies.
On Sunday I had a lot to do, but everything else went out of the window as I was totally absorbed in The Crowded Bed by Mary Cavanagh which has just been published by the aforementioned Transita. I read it straight through only stopping for the odd necessary visit and to grab a cup of tea.
Unusually, the story is narrated by a man, Joe Fortune, a Jewish doctor, who has been married to his adored wife Anna, for twenty years. He loathes his father in law who is cruel, sadistic, and wildly anti-Semitic and finally, after years of simmering hatred, Joe decides to kill him. This is stated in the opening sentence of the book which certainly grabs the reader's attention.
The book ranges from the present to the past and back again, and we gradually learn just what has happened to bring Joe to the point where he is considering committing murder. He had had a loving but stifling childhood, brought up by 'the quartet' his parents and grandparents who smothered him with affection and care. He eventually escapes to University where he leads a lonely life studying medicine and where he meets Urshie, the good Jewish girl his parents always wanted him to bring home. Though he has fought against his heritage, Joe is a good Jew at heart and feels it right to carry on the family line so he marries Urshie who is pregnant with his child, even though they do not love each other. It is a disastrous marriage and descends to physical fights and abuse. Caught in a cycle of misery, Joe then meets Anna, a nurse working in the same hospital and for the first time in his life, falls deeply in love.
His love is reciprocated and their affair is passionate, but lies and betrayal separate them and they are not reunited until many years have passed. Joe is aware that Anna has secrets of her own, but has agreed not to ask her anything of her past and to accept that their life together starts now.
The use of the time shifting device and the alternating narratives of Joe and Anna gradually draw the reader in and, as you become privy to their inner thoughts and feelings, you become totally involved with both characters and care about their fate. At one point I was fighting against the temptation to take a quick peek at the final pages to see how it all ended, but managed to resist and glad I did as the ending of this book packs quite a punch. Anna has kept secrets not only from Joe, but from us, the readers and when in the final few pages we learn about her secrets, what she has hidden from Joe and what she will continue to keep hidden, it comes as quite a shock.
And if you want to know if Joe did murder his father-in-law and, if he did, whether he got away with it well, you will just have to buy the book and find out.....
You won't be disappointed!

Lisa Guidari, Independent BlogReviewer, Chicago, USA http://bluestalking.typepad.com
The Crowded Bed surprised me. It wasn't that I hadn't expected it to be a great read, because I'd peeked at enough other reviews by people I respect to know this was very much worth the time. What I didn't expect was how complexly woven the writing actually was.
I'm not one to throw out a lot of comparisons between modern writers and standards in the western canon, because that one thing can make me very wary of reviewers, but there were times I was reading this novel I thought the prose was so inwardly complex I thought of Woolf's novels. I know, that's a pretty high claim, but if it hadn't happened I wouldn't be claiming it. There were times I got so caught up in the prose style of The Crowded Bed, a style bordering on stream of consciousness, I forgot where I was or which author I was reading. I only knew that it was very, very good.
The plot of the book is shocking, in that way books written by people with anger verging on psychosis can be. In this case there's no doubt the anger is entirely justified. There is such a thing as unpardonable offenses. It's just the fact the resolution to the situation involves a threatened murder that gives pause.
Joe Fortune, the main male character in the book, has been in love with Anna for nearly his entire life. She is his idea of perfection, his soulmate, and he in turn is all of that to her, as well. However, Anna's controlling, manipulative father, Gordon, despises Joe, largely because he is Jewish and not good enough for his daughter. Never mind the pain this causes her. Gordon couldn't have cared less about that. There was almost nothing so low he wouldn't stoop to it in order to keep Joe away from Anna. Joe, in turn, nurses such a deep hatred toward Gordon he imagines he could murder him. Beneath it all there's even more betrayal than Joe could have imagined, and ultimately the question becomes not ‘how could he consider murder,’ but ‘how could he not.’
Where it all leads I won't tell you. It's not a simple story, and doesn't have a simple resolution. The Crowded Bed is deeply psychological, and often quite dark. At times the prose verges on obscure, but it does so with a point. The mind is not simple territory, especially when such strong passions are at stake. Mary Cavanagh does a superb job venturing into the heart of all this turmoil, and she handles it all with an assured hand. This is a thoroughly impressive debut.

Mark Thornton
Mostly Books – Abingdon - Oxon
The Crowded Bed is a rare treat. A gripping, page-turning story, combined with the finest prose writing. My tip as a huge success in 2007.


Jane Karpa
The Bookstore – Abingdon – Oxon
It was an excellent read. Rarely do I finish a book and then want to read it again immediately, but I did with The Crowded Bed. CONGRATULATIONS!


Sharon Stanley – Library reader from Ipswich, Suffolk
From: S STANLEY [mailto:sstanley134@btinternet.com]
Sent: 18 February 2007 19:31
As usual spent Saturday in the library. On the quick selection stand was the above book. I looked, read the back and chose. On Sunday morning I opened the book and finished it at 19:15; I am going to buy it to read again in a month to taste again the texture of it. I laughed; I cried; I sat stunned by the depth of treatment of many of humankind’s blackest deeds: incest, alcoholism, bullying and betrayal. The systematic destruction of motherhood by fear; the familial structures being denied; religious and racial differences of the times and the social blindness of observers all being treated so wittily and sometimes cynically, this book reveals an intensity rarely shown by a first timer.
I am from South London and know Peckham Rye, Bromley and Orpington very well. She has captured the essence of all places, urban to suburban so very well, from linoleum to crimplene trousers and cravats.
I can honestly say that I rarely give up food for a book but today I did so. Is she a 21st century Susan Hill, I believe so. On that note I am going to cook.
Thank you so much for publishing her and please send my thanks for a great read to Mary.
http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com (with review of TCB in response to The Times David Baddiel column)

Ex-Libris - Sharon Goforth, USA – Independent Book Reviewer
June 16, 2007
Rating: 5/5
For the past several months, I have been reading and reviewing books published by Transita, a publisher whose primary audience is women who are in their 40's and 50's. These books focus on a number of issues of interest to this group and often present very creative ways in which to deal with them. I was surprised, then, when I began to read The Crowded Bed by Mary Cavanagh. The first page was a cold, clinical, and calculating invitation to witness a murder. Not even an invitation, really. It was a statement: if you continue to read this book, you will witness a murder. Once that was established (and it was very quickly), the remainder of the book told the behind-the-scenes story leading up to that event.
The Crowded Bed is the story of Joe Fortune, a middle-aged Jewish physician. Anna is Joe's non-Jewish wife who comes from a very wealthy, dysfunctional family, dominated by her powerful and abusive father. Both Joe and Anna are haunted by private demons, as well as their own shared past that weigh down on them; hence, the crowded bed. It is a jigsaw puzzle of a story, assembled from vignettes that take place across time, culminating in the above mentioned murder.
The story is gripping. The characters are unrepentantly flawed, which makes them believable and (in some cases) sympathetic. This book brought to mind questions that do not have easy answers. Is murder ever justified? Is ‘an eye for an eye’ ever an appropriate response? I like a book that doesn't have easy answers and makes me think.
The Crowded Bed is a gripping story, and one of the best books I've read this year. It is a story that will stay with me a long time.

The Jewish Chronicle
May 25th 2007
The Crowded Bed is a neatly told tale of intermarriage featuring A Jewish GP, his beautiful non-Jewish wife and her deep and dangerous father.

Detective work
From The Oxford Times, first published Thursday 21st Jun 2007.
Mary Cavanagh's first novel The Crowded Bed is a skilfully complex, psychological piece full of high drama and murky secrets, although at its heart is a loving, long-enduring relationship. It begins with Jewish GP Joe Fortune murdering his father-in-law Gordon before he returns to bed with his sedated wife Anna. Shocking and horrific, you might think, but by the end of the book, one empathises very much with Joe's dark deed because wealthy, powerful, well-connected Gordon is truly a monster.
The book, which is mainly told from Joe's viewpoint, starts five days before the murder and alternates between past and present. Over its course we go through Joe's loving, but suffocating childhood, Oxford University days and his hellish first marriage to a nice Jewish girl. This is interspersed with Anna's loveless upbringing and difficult first marriage. It is clear that they are passionately in love with each other, but that their bed is full of the ghosts of a sometimes unbearable past and Joe wants to murder Gordon in part to avenge these.
When I asked Mary what inspired her to create Joe, she explained how her central character was originally Gordon, but that when Joe appeared, he demanded centre stage.’ He became so fascinating to me,’ she said. Mary then went through some happy years finding out about Jewish culture. ‘I tagged on to the shirt-tails of every Jew I knew and made sure that my research was right,’ she said. ‘I went through a phase of being absolutely fascinated with the religion, the people, with the attitude to their faith and their attitudes towards their social structure and culture, which is so much part of Judaism.’
Such absorption has enriched the book greatly and some reviewers have said how well she describes Jewish family life. They have also compared her book to such diverse authors as Susan Hill, Anita Shreve, Virginia Woolf and Henry Fielding. Blog reviewers, who are becoming increasingly influential, particularly seem to like her book.
Apart from murder, she tackles some very dark themes: incest, adultery and abuse, but because of the way she writes, they never seem melodramatic. They just unfold, are explained and become part of Anna and Joe's hinterland. I asked what made her want to write about these things.’ I'm not the sort of writer that can write ten pages about a man putting a sock on,’ she said. ‘I have actually got to have some sort of real drama in my books to develop my characters.’
Mary was born and grew up in North Oxford. She used parts of her childhood in the book - Joe's school is based on St Barnabas School in Jericho, while Gordon is based on ex-colonials who she came across as a child in North Oxford.’ They were used to servants and kowtowing and they had no humanity at all,’ she said.
She came to writing late in life. ‘I only did it when I had the head space.’ That came when her two sons were at college, even though she was working full-time as a medical administrator. ‘Once I took it up, I never ever let it go. I never thought I can't be bothered. I was always bothered.’
She was inspired to write by Kate Atkinson's book Behind the Scenes at the Museum.’ I thought I don't have to write like everyone else, I can be unique, I can do wild things and I can get away with it.’ She can, because she writes with great warmth and panache, making her characters believable and, apart from Gordon, likeable. She found writing male characters easy.’ I am a real man watcher. I've had male employers, before I was married I had boyfriends and I made a sport of watching them and realising that they're very different to women.’ By contrast she finds it difficult writing women. ‘I don't know why. Maybe because I'm not very good at revealing myself.’
The book was published earlier this year when Mary was 60.’Mary Wesley started at my age or even older. She actually managed to sustain a career and that's what I want out of my writing, I want a career. I've still got a lot of energy and a lot of impetus.’ She also has the nous to realise that to get books sold she has to generate publicity herself.’ I've been quite ruthless in being bold. I've never been like that before.’
Boldness led to David Baddiel writing a bizarre column in The Times about how he was refusing to review the book as he'd only been sent it because he was a Jew. Great publicity for Mary and it resulted in a proper review in the paper. See what a bit of chutzpah can achieve.

Caroline080 BookCrosser
Having been warned by previous reviews that this was not the usual romance froth, I took it slowly and paid attention from the start. It was worth it. The structure is intricate but is made clear to the careful reader at the beginning, the story is spell-binding and the characters are so attractive I wanted to know what happened to all of them. I read it in one night, although I did have to stay awake late to finish it.

Miranda Stock
Oxford Daily Information
This is a first novel by Oxford author Mary Cavanagh, and it is excellent. It opens – arrestingly – with the hero, Joe, murdering his father-in-law, and the rest of the novel dances adroitly between the past and the present to divulge the reasons why he done it. Rarely can there have been a fictional character who so richly deserved to be murdered (in fact you almost feel that murder is too good for him!), and the reader must cast aside any personal scruples that murdering people is wrong to really enjoy the story and sympathize with Joe – who is, indeed, a very engaging and sympathetic character.
Joe is a Jew, who grew up in a close and loving working class Jewish family, did well at school and Oxford, and became a doctor; but his personal life is a mess. He basically doesn’t fancy Jewish girls and yearns for a cool blonde shikse with milky skin and clear eyes; after a false start with the plain and shrewish Ursula, he finally gets his Venus on the half-shell in Anna, a lissom blonde beauty, who returns his passion and gives herself to him utterly, partly to escape her horrible father, and partly to spite him. But Anna’s clear-eyed innocent appearance hides frightful secrets, and the novel uncovers these masterfully, never letting the suspense drop, and delivering every revelation with style and humour. Anna never wants to speak about her past, which leaves Joe vulnerable to the lies of interested parties.
The tale of their misunderstandings, betrayals, parting, loss, eventual happy marriage and resolution of the misunderstandings is gripping, dramatic, believable. I had to stay up till 3.30 this morning to finish it. Much of the book is told as a first person narrative by Joe, and this is a great success – his love for Anna and for his children, his ambivalent feelings about his family and background, his hatred for his father-in-law, his intensely physical nature, sometimes pulling counter to his sensitivity and intellect, are all captured with salty, grounded detail. If anything – this is a tiny quibble - his visceral passions and griefs loom so large that they slightly overshadow the more anodyne character of Anna, whose calm, gentle, loving nature seems an unlikely outcome for someone with such tragedies and cruelties in their history. But don’t let that put you off. This is a riveting story beautifully told, and deserves whopping success. I am very pleased to have found Mary Cavanagh, and I hope she writes lots more novels.

Sue Fairhead
Independent Reviewer
www.thebookbag.co.uk
The book begins with a prologue. The author invites us to watch Dr Joe Fortune as he prepares to murder his father-in-law, before getting back into bed with his sedated wife Anna. Spine-chilling, particularly as the author adds that Joe is aware that he has sinned, but does not care.
Immediately we're taken back to 1955 where Joe is five years old, raised by a loving but rather claustrophobic Jewish family: his two parents and two grandparents. Then we're taken to 1965, when Anna is five years old. The scene here is a formal Christmas dinner where Anna feels ill, and is severely reprimanded by her strict father.
Thus the stage is set for the rest of the book, which is helpfully described as taking place in both the present and the past. This is exactly what happens. Each chapter begins in one of the days leading up to the murder, written from Joe's perspective. Then there are lengthy flashbacks to the past, in both his and Anna's childhood and teenage years, and their early adult life. The main point, perhaps, is to show how even cold-blooded murder can sometimes seem entirely justified.
I was a bit ambivalent about reading this book. The blurb on the back tells me it's about revenge, mutual hatred, cruelty, violence and shocking revelations. It sounds over-dramatic and rather exhausting. I don't like thrillers; I like peaceful stories with happy endings. Having finished the book, however, I don't think the blurb does it justice. This is a character-driven novel which is very cleverly crafted, revealing the past in such as way as to build up a clear and positive picture of both Joe and Anna, and many of their relatives too. There is violence and unpleasantness, but it's not described in gory detail. By the end of the first chapter I could quite see why Joe wanted to murder his wife's ghastly father.
Not every incident is explained in full at the time, so there's a gradual unfolding of the various subplots in ways that manage to seem entirely natural. No awkward pauses for thoughts about what had happened; instead we move almost seamlessly between the years, with each scene building on what has gone before and hinting about what is to come. The revelations happen gradually, so the shock isn't too great. And there's a bit of ironic humour here and there, too, that made me smile inwardly.
It was thought-provoking, too. By the end I was fully sympathising with Joe and hoping he wouldn't be detected as a murderer. I also found myself thinking about other issues that came up naturally in the book: religious and racial intolerance, incest and adultery.
As a debut novel this is impressive. I look forward to reading more by this author in future.
Christopher Gilmore
Former Literary Editor
Tradition holds that all the best mainstream English novels have to do with three themes: money; adult sexuality, and social status. The cocktail is variously mixed, but all are present, and all will motivate the principal characters. A variety of spices can be added to the mix, and to The Crowded Bed Mary Cavanagh adds one of the most potent – traditional Ashkenazi Jewishness. In the present climate of increasingly fashionable anti-Semitism, it is also one of the most dangerous, but in truth, it was never easy for anyone. So Cavanagh has set herself a hard course, the more so as it’s also a course into the unknown. For Joe Fortune, her protagonist (sometimes first-person, sometimes not), is not only an unbelieving (though not entirely unobserving) Jew obsessed with his own Jewishness, he’s also a successful man of hedonistic bent with an extremely happy marriage to a Schiksa. Yet the Bed of the title, their marriage bed, is crowded indeed, and not only with the usual personnel.
Apart from comprehensible guilt feelings deriving from the weaknesses of the flesh and competing duties, Joe has to contend with a tight little knot of emotions deriving from his East End background. The brilliant only child of an Orthodox couple, he has more than his share of ‘smother love’, and the embarrassment that goes therewith; and of course, he is ashamed of being embarrassed. Neither feeling is one for which he can possibly expect sympathy from any quarter, which leaves him feeling sorry for himself, and ashamed of that.
Mary Cavanagh writes about these emotions with great insight and a superb eye for the telling detail, but that is by no means the limit of her range. The other occupant of the Bed, Joe’s second wife, has a background very unlike his, and in many ways a great deal worse. Whereas Joe is smothered in love, Anna is the product of a loveless marriage. Joe’s parents, and grandparents, may sometimes make him want to grind his teeth, but they represent reality: What you see is what you get, however embarrassing. Anna’s father is outwardly impressive, but is in reality a domestic tyrant and hateful hypocrite, motivated exclusively by his desire to look well in the eyes of a world that he hates and despises – as he hates and despises everything except himself.
Once again, Cavanagh is taking a heavy risk with such a character. It would be all too easy to make him too hateful for belief, because a man with no redeeming features at all lacks credibility. That was how Dickens failed with Pecksniff. Yet Cavanagh succeeds, as Samuel Butler succeeded with Theobald Pontifex, and by much the same means. She presents him in a series of vignettes, always with something to say, and always showing consistent motivation.
And the story? As the novel shuttles back and forth through time, we meet Joe as a child, as a young man, and well into middle age – by which time he is truly happy. Yet it is not an unalloyed happiness; in a superb piece of parallel writing, she describes how this couple, who know and understand each other well, and are still very much in love, lie wakeful together, each feigning sleep, each aware that the other is pretending, and neither daring to speak to the other, least the Crowd erupt to overwhelm their relationship. There is something yet to be done, and it must be done, to lay at least some of the demons that crowd the marriage bed – for all that it would appear to entail considerable risk. It is the planning and execution of this deed that constitutes the core narrative, while all the history of Joe, and Anna, and Joe’s hellish first marriage, and the accommodations Joe seeks to make with his children, serve to explain why it must be done.
It is Cavanagh’s triumph that by the end, we sense the necessity as keenly as does Joe.

Liz Broomfield
BookCrosser
This is an action-packed story of six days and fifty-odd years in the lives of Joe and Anna Fortune. The Jewish/non-Jewish relationship was interesting to me as I am in a similar relationship (although luckily Matt doesn't feel the Lure Of The Other quite as much as Joe in the book - I am no Boticelli angel!). The author cites her influences as Alan'n'Arnold Bennett etc, but I detected more of a trace of Howard Jacobson in her angst-ridden London Jewish boy, desperate to escape his clinging family and seek another way, or Philip Roth (who is name-checked). In fact, interestingly, this book does not identify as being written by a woman or a man. The male narration is convincing and I think this gives the book a broad appeal. I did not guess the plot twists and the story was told well.


Stuck In A Book
As promised, a review of Mary Cavanagh's The Crowded Bed today. For those keeping tabs, Blogger appears to have once more changed the format for posting, so we'll see how this goes..."Good evening, dear friend. I'm extremely pleased to see you, but I'm sure you'll understand why I can't give you my full attention. Joe Fortune is just about to kill his father-in-law, and I've no intention of missing this long awaited event."So opens The Crowded Bed... Gosh. From the first sentence I sensed this wouldn't be an uneventful novel - and, genre-wise, it's a canny decision by Cavanagh. If it hadn't been arranged thus, we'd have had a Hamlet-esque tussel over whether or not Joe wanted to kill his father-in-law - and let's face it, who hasn't watched Hamlet and thought "to be or not to be, don't care, just get on with it!"I digress. The Crowded Bed follows Joe, a Jewish boy and later doctor, from childhood through various relationships and to just after the pivotal moment described. Like many recent novels I've read, the narrative jumps about a bit, so 'the present' is shown parallel to various sections of the past - though, like those novels too, it's not confusing. I found Joe a fairly repugnant character, but I think that's ok - he has manifold sins under his belt, and more or less his only redeeming trait is a deep love for his son. And an abiding love for Anna.She's the other lass. Liked her. Despite her name, she's not Jewish - she's more like Botticelli's Venus, as shown on the cover. My favourite sections of this novel were the opening chapters, when the childhoods of Joe and Anna were depicted alongside each other, and thus contrasted. Where Joe has indulgent and proud parents, Anna had a vicious father and a passive mother. And a twin brother, a theme popping up in quite a few recent reads. Reading their childhoods in this comparative way is so revealing about the characters and the way they interrelate.The path isn't smooth for Joe and Anna. That crowded bed gets pretty crowded as the novel progresses, and I'll keep schtum over whether or not they manage to kick everyone else out but, suffice to say, the shocks keep coming to the very end. Cavanagh has written a novel which is both gentle and vicious, warm and unsettling. It's hard to like many of the characters, but that doesn't stop being compelled to find out more - and the rollercoaster they go through is dramatic but believable. Certainly not comfort reading (though someone recently described The Kite Runner as that, so it takes all sorts) but is a very engaging and perpetually surprising novel. Oh, and it features Oxford, which is always exciting!

Reader-2-Reader
This was recommended to me by a friend who said it was being talked about a lot and getting good reviews so I thought I'd give it a go. If there is a lot of buzz about this book it is well-deserved. From a murder you are an accessory to right at the beginning of the book, you are taken through the histories of the killer and his adored wife in way that gradually reveals why the murder has taken place. It's a fascinating and compelling read so far - you'll have trouble putting it down!
Suggested by Jane, Birmingham
Tagged with: page-turner


http://www.hercircleezinel.com/
‘Good evening, dear friend. I'm extremely pleased to see you, but I'm sure you'll understand why I can't give you my full attention. Joe Fortune is just about to kill his father-in-law, and I've no intention of missing this long awaited event’: this is how The Crowded Bed begins, and it follows up on its promise of family secrets and action-filled drama. Anna is a teenager when she meets Joe, ten years her senior. They fall in love, only to be forced apart by her wealthy, tyrannical father. About ten years later they meet again and marry. The novel is comprised of the story of what happens in the interim, as well as the period before their first meeting. Joe is the narrator for most of the book. He grew up a working-class Jew with hopes of bettering his position by becoming a doctor. While in medical school, he meets his first wife, Ursula, who gets pregnant accidentally. Against her better judgment, he convinces her to have the baby and marry him. He lives to regret the unhappy marriage, especially after he meets Anna, a nurse he works with.
Anna, on the other hand, grew up rich but troubled, with an abusive, controlling father, a twin brother who plays guitar in a punk band and has a drug problem, and a defeated alcoholic for a mother.
All of the characters in this book do terrible things: they have affairs (the central marital bed is, indeed, crowded), they keep secrets, they hurt each other physically and emotionally, they act selfishly. The only clear villain, though, is Anna's father. The rest of the characters are spokes of a wheel spiraling outward in reaction to him. Thus the book explores questions of morality and the effects of brutality enacted on innocent people.
At the end of the book, the neutral narrative voice returns. It says, ‘Now they are free; free to find a perfect version of their own peculiar freedom, and they will, dear friend. Rest assured, they will.’

The Crowded Bed
Anne Darnton – Independent Reviewer
Patternings - http://patternings.typepad.com/patternings/
I remember there being some quite heated discussions in reading circles when Transita began publishing books aimed specifically at the over 45 women's market. I can't pretend to recall what the arguments were, either for or against, as it wasn't a debate I was particularly interested in. As long as the books are good and nobody is actually going to be banned from buying them if the don't fit into the intended demograph then I can't really see what all the fuss is about. Mary Cavanagh's first novel, The Crowded Bed, is also my first foray into the Transita world and I ordered it not because of who had published it, but because two readers whose views I really trust had spoken so highly of it.
The Crowded Bed is the story of Joe and Anna Fortune and their tortuous route to a happy married life. The double time scheme of the novel covers, in one strand, just the five days leading up to and encompassing the death of Anna's brutish father, Gordon, and, in the other, the years from Joe's birth into a close and loving East End Jewish family through his meeting with Anna to the time of their marriage. Through Cavanagh's exploration of the latter we come to understand the reason for what Joe does in those crucial five days.
Initially I didn't think I was going to enjoy this as I'd just come from another book dominated by someone who believed that they had a right to treat others exactly as they liked, exercising power in a mean and brutish way. However, the book doesn't focus as much on Gordon Morton Moore (Anna's father) as the opening suggests it might and the other characters, while flawed and frustrating in many ways are all warm and likable human beings and I very soon found that I was bound up in their lives and their attempts to chart a path through the ideals of their upbringing and the realities of life in an ever changing social climate. Ironically, then, I think if I have fault to find with the book it is that Gordon's behaviour (and he should really have been put down at birth) didn't surface often enough for me to really work up the necessary head of anger to condone what Joe does. When I sit back and think about it in the light of everything I learn about him then, yes, he deserved precisely what he got, but in the act of reading I didn't find myself building up the emotional fury that would have had me screaming for his end.
Having said this, I really did enjoy this book and will certainly read anything else Cavanagh writes, whoever publishes it.

Philippa Martin
Abingdon Readers Group
A cleverly constructed and entertaining read. An impressive achievement.
John McLellan
Journalist
Mary Cavanagh has created a satisfyingly, deftly drawn cast of memorable characters. The tale is pacy, recounted with a deft wit and neatly observed touches

David Baddiel
His word
‘Every offer in my in-tray comes garnished with herring and neurosis’
OCCASIONALLY, BECAUSE I AM known as a man of letters about town in literary London – and also, maybe, from writing a books column – publishers and literary agents send me books, in the hope that I will provide a quote for the cover, or alternatively, perhaps, mention them in this very newspaper.
Now, often – not always, but often – these books are titles that are skewed somehow in my direction, based on what the publishers feel they know about me: so they might be about football, or comedy, or insomnia or hardcore pornography.
But the other day, I received a copy of The Crowded Bed, by Mary Cavanagh, with a suggestion that I might review it. I couldn’t work it out. On the front cover was the face of Venus from Botticelli’s painting of her birth; tasteful author and title fonts; a coverline announcing a ‘rich and compelling story’ that through ‘warmth and humour’ reveals ‘a tragic and shocking drama’.
It looked for all the world like a solid piece of upmarket women’s fiction, something in between Joanna Trollope and Anita Brookner, who are not, to be honest, authors who usually think of me as slapbang in the middle of their demographic. Then, in the first sentence of the story description on the back, I spotted a key word. See if you can pick it out: ‘Joe Fortune, a Jewish GP, has been married to Anna, his Aryan beauty, for twenty years.’ Here’s a clue: it’s not ‘Aryan’.
I’m sure The Crowded Bed is a fine novel, but I won’t be reviewing it. This is because, although I am, at heart, extremely proud of being Jewish, and not in any kind of Jewish closet (I think it’s more likely to be a larder, but there you are), I’m not keen on something that, judging from the work which seems to come my way these days, appears to have happened to my public profile: namely that I’ve become British Culture’s token Mr Jew.
I haven’t helped this by writing a big Jewish story with Holocaust undertones for my last novel, nor by clearly being the Jewish one on Who Do You Think You Are?, but these were things that I thought I could do without necessarily boxing myself into a corner marked with a glowing yellow star. Turns out this was meshugge: I have always received the odd request from Jewish charities, but now it seems that every other offer in my in-tray comes with a garnish of pickled herring and entrenched neuroses.
To be fair, this is just what happens when you come out with whatever-it-might-be on a public stage. I was complaining – no doubt in quite a typically Jewish way – about this very issue the other day to Justine Picardie, who has written a memoir and a number of articles about the tragic death from breast cancer of her sister Ruth. She told me that now she always gets contacted any time there is a new book/documentary/seminar in the offing about death.
Now I’m not suggesting that being seen as Mr Jew is as bad as being seen as Mrs Death, but it amounts to the same thing. The problem is not the subject matter, which may be something that deeply concerns and engages you, but the stamping of one’s self with that subject matter in a way that comes completely to define you. Which leads to the nagging feeling that no one thinks about asking you to talk or write about anything else.
Fact is, I might not mind so much being seen as Mr Jew if Jewish ever gets its moment of being hip. Every other minority – black, Asian, gay etc – has had it, but Jews are seen by the liberal consensus in this country, if not in the US, as just a bit too suburban, a bit too associated with nasty old Israel, and – at the end of the day – not really different enough to justify banging soundtracks, angry film-makers and long ‘you should know about this’ pieces in The Guardian illustrated by moody portraits of men in yarmulkes standing by brick walls. There’s also a feeling, from the cultural Left at least, that Jews aren’t really oppressed or discriminated against enough to get given the hip card, which may have some truth if you ignore 2,000 years of Western history.
Apart from anything, being seen as the poster boy of any religion is somewhat ridiculous for me, as in terms of actual belief I have no other god besides Richard Dawkins. And the really bad thing is that, eventually, this kind of self-image gets under one’s skin. I’ve always quite fancied Botticelli’s Venus but now, looking again at the cover of The Crowded Bed, I can only presume it’s something to do with the lure, for me, the (filthy, leering) Jew, of the archetypal blonde shiksa. I know I should resist these thoughts, but a part of me is already shrugging and thinking: ‘Ah well, what can you mach?’