Hello and welcome to Meet the Writers.
I'm Georgina Godwin.
Today's guest grew up inside a story.
Her childhood was nomadic, imaginative, often chaotic, and it became the bedrock of her first novel,
Hideous Kinky, later adapted into a film starring Kate Winslet.
Since then, she's written nine more books,
each peeling back the layers of love, identity and family with grace and precision.
Her latest, My Sister and Other Lovers,
centres on two sisters navigating secrets, heartbreak and the long shadows cast by childhood.
It's a book about what we inherit, what we deny and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.
Esther Freud, welcome to Meet the Writers.
Thanks so much.
I loved your introduction and I must write that down when people ask me what the book's about.
Just later I will make a note.
We're sitting here in your lovely home, in your family home,
where it just feels so settled, domestic, loved and stable.
It couldn't be more different from your own childhood.
Well, that's not entirely true because my mother had an incredible knack of making a home beautiful.
and settled very quickly.
I remember when we first moved to London,