Book of the week: Re-educated by Lucy Kellaway

last updated 23 July 2021

“The glamorous unreliability of Esther Freud’s father, Lucian Freud, is an inescapable force in her novels,” said Markie Robson-Scott on The Arts Desk. Her ninth is a “what if?” exploration of her parents’ relationship: what if her teenage mother, pregnant by the older artist in the 1960s, had had to return home to Ireland to give birth in a hellish home run by nuns?

Rosaleen is the stand-in for her mother, Bernardine Coverley, while Felix Lichtman is the Freud figure, haunting the French pub and ordering oysters in Soho restaurants. The timeline is not always clear, but Freud brings it to life with her “customary skill” and touches of dark humour.