Though I've attended a couple of festivals this summer where Esther Freud has been speaking about this, her latest novel, I haven't been able to listen to her sessions, which has been frustrating! It's described as a continuation of her first book, the hugely successful 'Hideous Kinky', and, unapologetically, it merges fact and fiction, taking up the story of her family from her teenage years.

Whereas the nomadic lifestyle of two young girls and their mother came across as exciting, exotic and liberating in the colour and warmth of Morocco, Lucy and Bea are now a little older and have been taken to Ireland to visit their grandparents. The landscape is darker, colder and wetter and with the girls' growing maturity, they recognise that their rootless existence with unpredictable parenting isn't as much fun as they might have once thought it. 

Life moves on in London, with other members of the extended family as well as casual acquaintances and fluid relationships. It's a dark, sad story as Lucy and Bea seek to find their own way through, and their own sense of what they consider desirable and acceptable.

I didn't enjoy reading about this lifestyle, and didn't want to engage with any of the characters beyond the two young women, Lucy and Bea. I was, though, fascinated by the fact that this is overtly autobiographical fiction.

There was much that I felt I already knew through other novels by Esther Freud and the things she's shared in interviews and events in the past. But here she seems to go further. The central relationship here is sisterhood and Esther and Bella Freud have commented about how their memories differ. This is Esther's perspective and, in the light of 'The Salt Path' revelations recently, it continues the debate of memoir vs novel, the truth of memories and how we present real life events and characters in our personal stories.