ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the complex negotiation of memory and identity as well as the more general issue of being a woman and wearing multiple "skins"-of one's own body, family, history and culture-in the writings of contemporary British writer of Hungarian Jewish origin Charlotte Mendelson. It draws on the notion of space as both physical and symbolic, as well as a fluid and fixed entity, addressing the complexities of place of meaning vs. empty space. By way of exploring alternatives, Frank focuses on the literary text as a new locus of memory, drawing attention to the corporeal body, as well as language, which may provide narrative space "in these times of flux, uprooting, and great speeds of mobility". The chapter analyses Charlotte Mendelson's recent novel Almost English in terms of diasporic women's literature, in which the issues of hybridity, memory, place or placelessness, and identity are complicated by specifically female concerns, such as the body, sexuality, mother-daughter relationships and generation cycles.
