Book Recommendation

The Sea House by Esther Freud

Once in a while you come upon a novel you fall so deeply in love with that it becomes a lifetime favorites. This novel became that for me. I’d never heard of Esther Freud, and was shocked I hadn’t. For one thing, she wrote the novel that became one of my favorite movies, Hideous Kinky. For another, she’s the daughter of artist Lucien Freud and great-granddaughter of that other Freud—yes, that one.

I came upon this novel while browsing randomly in the library, and the cover and title drew me in (no surprise there—“beach houses”! “sea”!). It was written in 2004 and feels somehow older. The writing style is leisurely with a kind of old-fashioned charm. The story is set on the coast in Suffolk, England, in a tiny town, and has two timelines. In one, an artist comes to do a painting and meets a women who fascinates him; in the later timeline, a young woman comes to the same village to research the life of an architect whose love letters to his wife fascinate her, as does the village itself. The two stories are related—the wife of the architect is the woman who fascinates the artist of the earlier era—but they only overlap at one tiny point at the very end of the novel.  I was myself fascinated to learn that Esther Freud based the novel on the letters of her own grandfather, Ernst Freud. 

There are secrets, romantic passions, sad endings, and adorable children, but what most captivated me is the way Freud depicts the natural world surrounding this small town. The prose is stunning. I can’t resist giving you a taste of it. “[Lily] walked slowly, lulled by the swish and rustle of the sedge, past a hollow hill of hawthorn, its flowers scattered into the pool below it, leaving white petal pebbles on the surface like a witch’s stew.”

I’m a glutton for such language, such landscapes.  Feel free to reach out and suggest some of your favorites!