The Hideous Kinky author on her childhood dyslexia, the frenzy around being a perfect mother, and why there are so few great female artists
Esther Freud is the author of nine novels, including Hideous Kinky, her semi-autobiographical debut, which tells of her unconventional childhood in Morocco. The daughter of Lucien Freud and Bernardine Coverley, she trained as an actor before becoming a novelist. Freud has three children with the actor David Morrissey, from whom she recently separated. I Couldn’t Love You More is the story of three generations of Irish women: Rosaleen, a heroic, headstrong teenager in the early 1960s who begins an affair with an older man; Aoife, her mother, who recounts her life to her dying husband and wonders what became of her flighty daughter; and Kate, in London, married to the useless Matt, trying to make it as an artist while looking after their daughter, Freya. The three lives intertwine and overlap over the course of the novel.
You say in the acknowledgments that I Couldn’t Love You More was inspired by your own mother, bringing up children unmarried and without the support of her family.
I didn’t start the book with the intention of telling that story. I was thinking how much I’d like to write a book where love was the main theme. So I started with a real rush of energy, writing about it from different points of view, three women from different generations. I began really playfully and freely, writing these short chapters. After a while I realised I needed a story and some kind of plot, and it was then that it occurred to me to think more about my mother and how extraordinary it was that she managed to have two children without her parents knowing, and what it was like to be in such an unsupported world.
