Esther Freud on ‘My Sister & Other Lovers’

Esther Freud speaking about ‘My Sister and Other Lovers’ at Gertrude & Alice Bookstore

I was fortunate the get the opportunity to speak with English author Esther Freud when she was in Sydney in August. Esther Freud is author of 10 novels – we spoke about her latest one My Sister and Other Lovers. Her writing & novels really explore the complexity of family bonds. She returns to unconventional forms of family life in her novels (absent fathers, suddenly discovered half siblings, people who discover by accident they have grandchildren).

In My Sister and Other Lovers we meet sisters Lucy and Bea. We flash back to their childhoods, their teen years, to years that shaped them and we meet them now as adults. The novel brilliantly illustrates how siblings who grow up in the same home have hugely different experiences within the same family and form different memories.

Freud writing is crisp, layered, moments are brilliantly observed. The novel is like being submerged deep inside a character’s mind and subconscious. The book also explores questions about damage and responsibility, memory and creativity and how people use art to say things they need to communicate.