Esther Freud is probably best known as a novelist for
her autobiographical novel Hideous Kinky
(1992), based on her childhood experiences of travelling in Morocco with her
sister and hippy mother, because of the film that was made of it, starring Kate
Winslet.
More recently, two of her books that have stood out
for me as wonderful reads were Gaglow
(1997), set in a fictional country estate in East Germany of 1914 and spanning
several generations of a German Jewish family, and The Sea House (2003) a love story and much more, set in a seaside
village in Suffolk, where Freud herself has a home.
Clearly, Esther Freud mines her own history in her
writing, drawing on her extraordinary family – she is the great-grand-daughter
of Sigmund Freud and the daughter of artist Lucian Freud who died a few months ago; her sister is fashion designer Bella Freud, responsible for the
revival of Biba; her uncle Clement Freud the politician and broadcaster (Just A
Minute); her first cousin Mathew Freud the PR mogul connected, unfortunately of
late, to Rupert Murdoch.
Her stories seem to draw one in gently - not
page-turners that hook you right in from the beginning, but gradually working
their way right into your affections.
It recounts
the diverging paths and fortunes of a group of actors who first meet as
students at a drama college in London. From nervous, hopeful young first years being
inducted into Stanislavsky, method acting, and a brutal, often arbitrary
weeding out of talent, we follow the unpredictable course of their careers over
a decade and a half. The highs and lows ... first night elation,
disastrous castings, unscrupulous agents, the mechanics of sex scenes,
demoralising periods of waitressing in Pizza Express or playing a penguin for
four-year-olds, and the rare lucky breaks that lead to A-list success ... are all narrated with an authentic,
unsentimental touch and often pitch-perfect observation. In one of my favourite quotes, "There had been blood, foundation
and some hysteria."
Again, perhaps, this is because she draws on personal experience: Freud herself attended drama school in London and acted early on in life before turning to writing, and she is married to actor David Morrissey (State of Play, The Deal, Sense and Sensibility).
The photo above shows her writer's room, from the old Guardian series. I must say I do love it ... for the natural light, the view to the garden, and of course the Lucian Freud portrait next to the bookshelf.