★ 05/17/2021
Freud’s beautiful and insightful latest (after Mr. Mac and Me) focuses on three generations of distinct and well-drawn women. In 1939, Aiofe Kelly marries the dashing Cashel. They run a London pub and send their daughters to a Catholic boarding school in the Irish countryside during the war. Rosaleen, their feisty daughter, hopes to be a journalist, but her dreams are put on hold in 1959 when an opportunity at the Daily Express turns out to be a lowly mail-sorting job. She omits mention of her diminished circumstances in letters to her parents and falls in love with a Jewish sculptor, Felix Lichtman, many years her senior, and becomes pregnant, only to learn he already has a wife and child. Next, the reader meets Kate, who, in 1991, is married to a hapless musician with a drinking problem. Kate adores their daughter, Freya, and is an artist in her own right. Kate, who was adopted, frequently imagines seeing her birth mother, whom she learned about at age 10. As Freud delves into the three women’s lives, the reader is taken on a journey of heartbreak as desperate actions taken to protect loved ones are revealed. This eloquent exploration of the ineffable ties between mothers and daughters delivers the goods. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners. (July)
"I Couldn’t Love You More is a stirring portrayal of motherly love and familial and institutional abuse through the eyes of three generations of Irishwomen. . . . A masterpiece." — Historical Novel Society
“[An] incredibly powerful story about mothers and daughters . . . . Interesting and really heartbreaking." — Elizabeth Egan, The New York Times Book Review's "Group Chat"
"This is such a powerful book—it unravels a deep tragedy in three miraculously entwined stories, in three different times, mothers and daughters linked by sorrow and love. It’s a gently told story of harsh, harsh events—a mystery story of separation and sorrow that is finally resolved with truth and warmth, but with no punches pulled. It’s a book about shame and the evil men do, but also about strength and the possibility of salvation in the face of one of the great scandals of the last century." — Richard Curtis, screenwriter of Yesterday and Love Actually
"This exquisite family saga reads as a love letter between four generations of women. Everything is here; family ghosts, the bond between mothers and daughters, cruelty, endurance, the difficulty of love, and a faith in the possibility of healing - even after years of separation. This tender, elegant book delivers an emotional punch that left me in tears." — Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Miss Benson's Beetle
"Braiding the lives of mothers and daughters in England and Ireland across three generations, Freud explores the joys, heartbreaks, and aching enigmas of family bonds...Freud’s gifts for female empathy and fluid storytelling are fully evident in her ninth...the author’s insight is apparent, both in her character studies and expression, as the ambiguity of the book’s title demonstrates...A vivid, reliable saga of female experience." — Kirkus Reviews
"Beautiful and insightful...As Freud delves into the three women’s lives, the reader is taken on a journey of heartbreak as desperate actions taken to protect loved ones are revealed. This eloquent exploration of the ineffable ties between mothers and daughters delivers the goods." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"I Couldn’t Love You More is a stirring portrayal of motherly love and familial and institutional abuse through the eyes of three generations of Irishwomen. . . . A masterpiece."
"This exquisite family saga reads as a love letter between four generations of women. Everything is here; family ghosts, the bond between mothers and daughters, cruelty, endurance, the difficulty of love, and a faith in the possibility of healing - even after years of separation. This tender, elegant book delivers an emotional punch that left me in tears."
"This is such a powerful book—it unravels a deep tragedy in three miraculously entwined stories, in three different times, mothers and daughters linked by sorrow and love. It’s a gently told story of harsh, harsh events—a mystery story of separation and sorrow that is finally resolved with truth and warmth, but with no punches pulled. It’s a book about shame and the evil men do, but also about strength and the possibility of salvation in the face of one of the great scandals of the last century."
[An] incredibly powerful story about mothers and daughters . . . . Interesting and really heartbreaking."
★ 08/01/2021
There were no happy outcomes for young girls who found themselves pregnant in the strict Catholic Ireland of the recent past. This is the predicament of Rosaleen Kelly, a 19-year-old whose love affair with an older man ends abruptly when he turns up comatose in hospital, with a wife by his bedside. Her only choice is no choice—to seek shelter in a convent run by disapproving nuns who take in unwed mothers and place their babies for adoption. This three-stranded story belongs to Rosaleen; her heartbroken mother, Aoife, who never comes to terms with her daughter's disappearance; and Kate, the daughter Rosaleen is forced to give up. Decades later, as Kate's marriage to a philandering alcohol-addicted musician unravels, her need to find her first mother intensifies. VERDICT The story of unwed Irish mothers losing their babies to forced adoptions is similar to books and films like Philomena, but Freud's (Mr. Mac and Me) telling is fresh and moving. The mystery of whether the three women will ever reconnect gives the novel urgency.—Barbara Love, formerly at Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
2021-05-05
Braiding the lives of mothers and daughters in England and Ireland across three generations, Freud explores the joys, heartbreaks, and aching enigmas of family bonds.
Freud’s gifts for female empathy and fluid storytelling are fully evident in her ninth novel, which follows the Kelly family from pre–World War II years to more modern times. The lineage begins with Aoife, whose plans for a more ambitious life than her mother’s are reshaped by her love for Cashel Kelly, “a man with Ireland in his blood” (read traditionalism and sternly fixed opinions). After the war, Cashel and Aoife give up their London pub and move back to Ireland with their three daughters to farm. But their rebellious oldest, Rosaleen, craves freedom and soon returns to London, claiming a career at a national newspaper though her job is in the mailroom. Still in her teens, Rosaleen has already met Felix—older, richer, a sculptor, the man who couldn’t love her more but who will turn away at the crucial moment. Freud’s menfolk often prove flawed, including Matt, the unreliable, alcoholic partner of another woman, Kate, whose life of art teaching and care for her daughter, Freya, become increasingly driven by the search for her birth mother. The bones of Freud’s story emerge predictably, taking in scenes at the pitiless Convent of the Sacred Heart in Cork, a home for unwed pregnant girls, where Rosaleen suffers the tirelessly punitive attentions of the nuns. Viewers of the movies Philomena and The Magdalene Sisters will feel on horribly familiar territory here while the later developments of the narrative for all three women offer more emotional intensity than surprises. Yet the author’s insight is apparent, both in her character studies and expression, as the ambiguity of the book’s title demonstrates.
A vivid, reliable saga of female experience.
