My Sister and Other Lovers

Fact and fiction intermingle, but this elegant novel is more than memoir

Irish Examiner

In 1992 Esther Freud’s semi-autobiographical debut novel Hideous Kinky made her a name in the books world ... It was charming, fast-paced - and soon made into a film. So a sequel was a risk, but one which has paid off .... It captures everything from crushes to painful heels to heroin addiction, all in intense vignettes. A highly impressive account

The Times, The best books of 2025 so far — our critics’ picks

Freud is brilliant at capturing the time in a personal and a global sense … The details are so vivid you feel like you’re remembering the events yourself … it demands and rewards close attention

The Times

Lucy’s bruising but always engrossing passage from child to adulthood provides the arc here, and we’re deeply with her at every moment ... Freud’s alternately painful and funny story may cleave close to her fascinating life, but it begs larger questions, too, as Lucy’s insight grows into the lasting legacy of her rootless bohemian upbringing

Daily Mail

A soulful, semi-autographical tale about finding your place in the world

Good Housekeeping, The 20 best books out in July

Gorgeous and sad and gripping and moving - brutally honest about our search for love

Marian Keyes

Uncovering the raw, unspoken truths of sisterhood - from love and rivalry to unhealed wounds - this novel delves into the best and worst parts of growing up

Elle

Esther Freud’s latest work is a moving novel about sisterhood, secrets, betrayal and love

Sheerluxe

There is a subtle charm to each of Lucy’s lovers that slowly unravels as she learns and relearns the unreliability of everyone around her, while Bea’s distanced love encourages Lucy to open her mind to the possibility of love without possession

Big Issue

Despite the darkness of much of its subject matter, My Sister and Other Lovers is a spirited and funny book ... Above all else, the novel is an exploration of what it means to have a great love that is founded in shared adversity but still move past and through it – less a reckoning with the past than an acceptance of it. It is about learning how to love gently and with forbearance. It is a novel of deep compassion and grace

Saturday Paper

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

Guardian Book of the day

Frank, tender and unequivocal - Esther Freud brings us directly inside the beating and bleeding hearts of her characters. I loved this

Miranda Cowley Heller

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

A novel that inquires deeply into the tangled nature of family

The Gloss

Getting to know it slowly page by page has been like getting to know a person whom you know, by the end, you have grown to love ... It’s a triumph of a book. Elegant and luminous and incredibly moving. I am telling everyone about it - it will stay with me for a very long time

Rachel Joyce

Lucy’s narration is sparky and chatty, as honest about her mistakes as about her triumphs, and it is the honesty of the search, as well as the delightful exuberance of Freud’s humour, that makes this book such a hugely enjoyable experience

The Tablet

I loved it and gulped it down in a day ... Such sparse, elegant writing, yet still somehow gloriously vivid and deeply intense. So alive is each character now in my mind, so involved was I in their stories that I can still sense them beside me, and long to continue the conversation ... This will go down a storm

Gill Hornby

From now on, whenever I hear anyone refer to anything as "Freudian" I am going to assume they mean prose that's slender and perfect and sparkling. I'm stricken with love for this book

Meg Mason

I Ioved this book. Freud captures so many moments that are universal to many - falling in love, navigating parents, making mistakes, and all told with wonderful compassion

Hannah Rothschild

This gorgeous stark engrossing tale of sisterhood, daughterhood and everything in between will own you

Sam Baker

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

Dazzling

Sainsburys Magazine

I loved My Sister and Other Lovers as I have loved each and every one of Esther Freud’s books: she writes with an emotional deftness that is pearl-like, and captures sisterly love in all of its complex, tender, simmering ferocious glory

Sophie Dahl

An absolute pleasure to read ... An exquisite, elliptical novel, written with cool restraint: every sentence, every word, feels perfectly judged. How lovely to be in the hands of a writer who fully trusts her reader to come along with her and swim through the gaps without needing everything to be spelled out. What a joy this book is

Rebecca Wait

A non-stop delight … I couldn't love it more … It makes one want to clap hands and dance. It’s all so beautifully evoked, so vividly sensual

Barbara Trapido

What a total delight to re-encounter the irrepressible sisters from Hideous Kinky, a little older, wilder, wiser and discovering the punky joys of music, drama, love and adventure in 1970s London

Amanda Craig

My Sister and Other Lovers is such absorbing, quick-on-its feet reading, a lovely companion. Freud's particular mixture of gentle touch and deep echo is there on every page. What a writer she is

Susannah Clapp

A coming-of-age portrait of sisterhood and betrayal from the author of Hideous Kinky

Guardian, the books to look forward to in 2025

Praise for Esther Freud: ‘Freud is a modern literary rarity: a born storyteller

The Times

As close to a perfect novel as anything I’ve read in a long time. I loved every page of it

Ann Patchett

We know we’re alive because of the stories we tell each other, and the things we make, and the people we love, and that’s all we ever get. Freud knows that, and it is good to be reminded

Guardian

The sharp intimacy of the writing is ... full of compassion and a profound decency

Sunday Times

In a culture which dins with brashness and self-advertisement, attending to Esther Freud's still, truthful voice becomes not only a pleasure but a necessity

Jonathan Coe

Exquisite ... Delivers an emotional punch that left me in tears

Rachel Joyce

You will weep with happiness and sadness

Emma Barnett

I read it non-stop through the night, finding myself simultaneously uplifted and wrung out by the emotional power of the story and by its ambitious social and historical range. It couldn't be better

Barbara Trapido

Beautiful, moving, wonderful

Sam Baker

Freud is a consummate novelist. Her work is always intensely imagined and vividly observed, her characters alive … her story page-turning, complex and emotionally satisfying

Spectator

Written with precision and poignancy ... It left me feeling hopeful

Literary Review