Available Formats
My Sister and Other Lovers
By (Author) Esther Freud
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
4th November 2025
3rd July 2025
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Narrative theme: coming of age
823.92
Hardback
288
Width 162mm, Height 238mm, Spine 28mm
480g
A captivating coming-of-age novel about love, sisterhood, secrets and betrayal
'Slender, perfect and sparkling ... I'm stricken with love for this book' Meg Mason
'Details the profound and complex nature of love and family ... Spare, moving and beautifully written' Jojo Moyes
Freud brings us directly inside the beating hearts of her characters. I loved this Miranda Cowley Heller
Both delicate and profound about how relationships bind us together and pull us apart Tracy Chevalier
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From the author of Hideous Kinky comes a captivating novel about sisterhood, secrets, betrayal and love.
For as long as Lucy can remember, shes been caught between loyalty to her rootless, idealistic mother and devotion to her fierce and exacting sister, Bea. From her unsettled childhood to her turbulent teenage years, shes been forced to make a choice.
But as the sisters come of age and embark on their own experiments in love, drugs, work, motherhood they find their lives, and their relationships, increasingly in turmoil.
Can the love they have for each other transcend the damage of the past Or is the past too dangerous to examine
Both delicate and profound about how relationships bind us together and pull us apart -- Tracy Chevalier
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
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 ... Its 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
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
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
I loved My Sister and Other Lovers as I have loved each and every one of Esther Freuds 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. Its 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 CraigEsther Freud is the author of nine previous novels, and her work has been translated into thirteen languages. Her first novel, Hideous Kinky, was made into a film starring Kate Winslet. Freud was selected as one of Grantas Best Young British Novelists in 1993. Her other novels include The Sea House, Mr Mac and Me and I Couldnt Love You More. Her first full-length play, Stitchers, was produced in London in 2018; her first book for children, Enchanted Beach, will be published in the summer of 2025. She lives in London.