Book review: Esther Freud's I Couldn't Love You More

Esther Freud. Photo / Jillian Edelstein

I Couldn't Love You More
by Esther Freud
(Bloomsbury, $33)

The novelist Esther Freud bears the weight of her family name. Her great-grandfather, Sigmund Freud, changed the way humanity considered its consciousness with his invention of psychoanalysis – agree or disagree with the theory. Her father, Lucian Freud, was one of Britain's great painters and fathered a number of children: two from his first marriage and at least 12 (including Esther) by various mistresses. I Couldn't Love You More, her most recent book, participates in the atmosphere of Freud's immediate family.

It begins in 1991 outside the Convent of the Sacred Heart near Cork City in Ireland. Kate and her daughter, Freya, are searching for her birth mother and the journey has brought them to a wintery garden with graves of nuns. On the wall is another plaque, dedicated to all the babies who died there "before or shortly after birth".

Kate has been adopted and it is this fact that is central to the book, propelling its three timelines. She is an artist, locked into a difficult relationship, mother to a young daughter, with a strong need amid all the chaos of her life to know exactly who she is and where she comes from.

Then in 1960s London, Rosaleen is involved in a passionate affair with Felix, an older sculptor. In present-day Cork, Aoife, has a husband, Cashel, who is dying and she relives the story of their long marriage.

It is very much Kate's book but, as the novel unfurls, the accounts of each of the women reflect upon and change the others. They are related – grandmother, mother, daughter - but this is no ordinary generational novel. It has been disrupted by lives chosen and lives imposed. Questions have been raised by personal histories and are being considered and answered.

It is also a novel where women have been made responsible for their actions, whereas men, it seems, are free of responsibility. Rosaleen's affair with the older Felix is a case in point. The life of 60s artistic London is vividly drawn. Its characters and their allure are exactly communicated. But an unwanted pregnancy becomes a problem and Rosaleen makes the decision around which much of the book is structured - to return to Ireland and have her child.

This is Freud's ninth novel. Her first, Hideous Kinky, where two little girls were taken to 1960s Morocco by their mother, was a bestseller and was made into a film starring Kate Winslet. I Couldn't Love You More is a different book entirely, somehow more thoughtful, exploring matters in a more contemplative manner.

While the issue of single mothers in Ireland has been covered extensively recently, I Couldn't Love You More does not exploit it. It is simply part of the past, albeit with present consequences. Freud's novel is well-researched, with family insights, but it also has human truth on its side.

Reviewed by David Herkt