My Sister and Other Lovers - by Esther Freud (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A stirring novel from the author of I Couldn't Love You More and Hideous Kinky: the story of two sisters who couldn't be more different and the great love that holds them together throughout a tumultuous youth

For as long as Lucy can remember, she's been caught between love for her rootless mother and devotion to her fierce and exacting sister, Bea. From their peripatetic childhood to their restless teenage years--hitching through rural Ireland, the move to a communal house--she's been forced to make a choice between these two very different ways of approaching life.

But as the girls come of age and embark on their own experiments--in love, drugs, work, motherhood--Bea is at risk of drifting further and further away. Can their loyalty to each other transcend the damages of a past that feels almost too dangerous to examine?

With scalpel-sharp insight, Esther Freud excavates the most intimate relationships of our lives, laying bare the fear and longing, the secrets and mistrust. My Sister and Other Lovers is an irresistible exploration of love, family, and freedom in all its forms.

Review Quotes

"Slender, perfect, and sparkling. I'm stricken with love for this book." -- Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and Bliss

"Delicate and profound." -- Tracy Chevalier, author of The Glassmaker and Girl with a Pearl Earring

"How I loved this elegant novel. What sheer pleasure it is to be back in such sure and stylish hands. Esther Freud is peerless!" -- Francesca Segal, author of Welcome to Glorious Tuga

"Esther Freud is that rare thing - a writer who trusts the intelligence of her readers. My Sister and Other Lovers details the profound and complex nature of love and family. Spare, moving, and beautifully written." -- Jojo Moyes, author of We All Live Here and Me Before You

"Frank, tender and unequivocal -- Esther Freud brings us directly inside the beating and bleeding hearts of her characters. I loved this." -- Miranda Cowley Heller, author of Paper Palace

"A non-stop delight...It makes one want to clap hands and dance. It's all so beautifully evoked, so vividly sensual." -- Barbara Trapido, author of Sex and Stravinksy and Frankie and Stankie

"Freud writes with an emotional deftness that is pearl-like, and captures sisterly love in all of its complex, tender, simmering, ferocious glory." -- Sophie Dahl, author of The Man with the Dancing Eyes

"Freud's storytelling and her bohemian characters exert charm. Best of all, she delivers satisfaction in the book's full-circle conclusion which connects past and present in several forms, explores abiding psychologies, and addresses the repetitive pattern. A deft, smart, indulgent work that delivers--finally--its necessary integration." -- Kirkus Reviews

"My Sister and Other Lovers is billed as a novel but arguably occupies an interesting grey area between novel and memoir, resisting the expectations of both and creating something all of its own ... a fascinating tangle of fact and fiction that refuses easy answers, and a subtle, clever, evocative book." -- The Guardian

"It's the relationship between the sisters that lies at the heart of the novel, and Freud teases out its various pressure points with delicate, moving effect. . . .This beguiling story of female experience and family ties is well worth the three-decade wait." -- Financial Times

"A literary gift that keeps on giving...Among [the novel's] fascinations is the new, harsher light it sheds on some of the Moroccan incidents that were relayed from 5-year-old Lucy's naïve, incurably optimistic point of view in "Hideous Kinky."...Freud deftly captures the two sisters as they spin off into risky, unsavory situations and oscillate between estrangement and intimacy...Short and potent." -- New York Times