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Esther Freud
My Sister And Other Lovers (released 1st July 2025)
My Sister And Other Lovers (released 1st July 2025)
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From the author of Hideous Kinky comes a captivating novel about sisterhood, secrets, betrayal and love.
Susan's Review
British writer Esther Freud achieved considerable success with her semi-autobiographical debut novel Hideous Kinky, published in 1992. Set in the 1960s, the narrative centres on a single mother, Julia, who, having rejected what she regards as the stultifying conventions of middle-class English society, travels to Morocco with her two young daughters in search of spiritual fulfilment.
The appeal of this exotic novel was enhanced by the public knowledge that Esther Freud is the great-granddaughter of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and the daughter of the controversial painter Lucian Freud, with whom Esther’s mother, Bernadine Coverley, had an affair at the age of 18. While such fame sounds, unsurprisingly, as dependent on a woman’s association with illustrious men, Esther Freud has since forged her own highly successful career as the author of ten novels and the co-founder of a vibrant female theatre company.
Her new novel, My Sister and Other Lovers, is in effect a sequel to Hideous Kinky, although it also stands alone. A coming-of-age novel narrated in the first person by the younger sister Lucy, it begins a few years after the family’s return from Morocco. Another child, Max, from a different father, adds to the burden of the mother’s peripatetic, wayward life in which she relies on the good will of a series of friends and acquaintances to provide a home and the basics of life. At one level, My Sister and Other Lovers might be called a mother-blaming narrative. The older daughter Bea escapes her mother by fleeing to London and a life of drugs and dead-end relationships, while Lucy uses sex to gain the approval of men as substitutes for her an absent father. It seems like a sad legacy for a bohemian mother, as well as a punishment for defying a middle-class code of respectability.
Such damage, however, is only part of the story. Over the course of decades, the daughters develop a sense of resilience that’s arguably the effect, not of maternal neglect, but of having endured a tough life. Bea comes ‘clean’ and develops a career as a writer, while Lucy marries a kind, gentle man, has a much-loved baby, and becomes a successful textiles artist. But just as the plot appears to be heading for the conventional happy ending, further complications remind us that our lives rarely end with simple resolutions. While the experience of Bea’s childhood trauma doesn’t lie at the heart of the novel, its re-emergence raises serious questions about maternal responsibility. As well, Lucy’s ultimate loss of faith in men mirrors her mother’s experience with a series of untrustworthy partners.
Not that My Sister and Other Lovers is an unrelentingly bleak read. On the contrary, it’s distinguished by Lucy’s extraordinary capacity for compassion for the deeply flawed people, including and especially her mother, in her life. It’s also leavened by a bracing sense of humour. One notable example of comic incongruity occurs in the scene in which Lucy informs her father of the existence of his three sons. His embarrassed admission that he had “occasionally visited” a woman living nearby is met not with Lucy’s stern moral judgement but with raucous laughter at the ludicrously inappropriate nature of his ‘explanation.’ My Sister and Other Lovers is, above all, a big-hearted narrative in which Lucy finds joy and a sense of freedom in unexpected places, and in her steadfast love for her sister and her mother. Lucidly written, psychologically astute and acutely observed, Freud’s new novel, due for release in July, can be pre-ordered at the Lane Bookshop.
Publisher Review
A captivating coming-of-age novel about love, sisterhood, secrets and betrayal.
'Both delicate and profound about how relationships bind us together and pull us apart' Tracy Chevalier
For as long as Lucy can remember, she's been caught between loyalty to her rootless, idealistic mother and devotion to her fierce and exacting sister, Bea. From her unsettled childhood to her turbulent teenage years, she's been forced to make a choice. But as the sisters come of age and embark on their own experiments in love, drugs, work, motherhood they find their lives, and their relationships, increasingly in turmoil. Can the love they have for each other transcend the damage of the past? Or is the past too dangerous to examine?
'Slender, perfect and sparkling ... I'm stricken with love for this book' Meg Mason
'Details the profound and complex nature of love and family ... Spare, moving and beautifully written' Jojo Moyes
'Freud brings us directly inside the beating hearts of her characters. I loved this' Miranda Cowley Heller
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