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Summary and Reviews of Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud

Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud

Hideous Kinky

A Novel

by Esther Freud
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 1, 1993, 192 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Feb 1999, 192 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Called "a near-seamless meshing of family feeling, history and imagination" by the New York Times Book Review and the inspiration for the film starring Kate Winslet.

Escaping gray London in 1972, a beautiful, determined mother takes her daughters, aged five and seven, to Morocco in search of adventure, a better life, and maybe love. 

Hideous Kinky follows two little English girls — the five-year-old narrator and Bea, her seven-year-old sister — as they struggle to establish some semblance of normal life on a trip to Morocco with their hippie mother, Julia. Once in Marrakech, Julia immerses herself in Sufism and her quest for personal fulfillment, while her daughters rebel — the older by trying to recreate her English life, the younger by turning her hopes for a father on a most unlikely candidate.

Rediscover this transporting modern classic about the spirit of freedom, filled with the sights, smells and textures of twentieth century Morocco. Shocking and wonderful, Hideous Kinky is at once melancholy and hopeful.

A remarkable debut novel from one of England's finest young writers, Hideous Kinky was inspired by the author's own experiences as a child. Esther Freud, daughter of the artist Lucian Freud and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, lived in Marrakech for one and a half years with her older sister Bella and her mother. 

Introduction

I came to reading late, and writing even later. There were no childish poems, no adolescent novels, no comprehension that any living person could ever write a book. But that's not to say that there weren't stories. My mother read to us aloud – The Arabian Nights, Tintin, Alice in Wonderland – and from the start I was caught up in the crossfire of these dramas, thrilled and terrified, reassured. Soon I began telling stories of my own. At first to myself, and then as entertainment for my sister and the group of friends we collected as we travelled across Europe to North Africa, hitch-hiking through the Atlas Mountains, making our way from Marrakech to Fez. Stories and their telling gave me a role, and I was hungry for identity; they helped to fill the in-between hours, made me useful, formed a frame for the events of our peripatetic life.

I was ten before I learned to read. Dyslexia, or possibly sheer overwhelm – my head was full of noise and colour, mirages...

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

The young narrator is not a stand-in for an adult looking back at her youth, but an authentic child, whom Freud conveys beautifully as a full-fledged, if small, person, and many-faceted as most children are—innocent, clever, observant, capricious—and generally willing to move through new experiences as long as her emotionally anchored family is nearby. Morocco has historically been a family-oriented culture, and the author avoids exoticizing the novel's local characters in favor of highlighting their general tilt toward kindness in dealing with this strange, nomadic family. In 1998, the novel was adapted by the author into a film starring Kate Winslet. Over time, I have noticed a greater familiarity with the movie than its source. Freud's book outshines, however, because she understands this wonderful, adventurous story is, above all, a story about childhood. And who better to tell that story than the child herself?..continued

Full Review Members Only (702 words)

(Reviewed by Danielle McClellan).

Media Reviews

Los Angeles Times
Genuine and endearing... Esther Freud is adroit at capturing the way adult follies appear to a child and she has a gift for unstated hilarity... Like the sword swallowers in the marketplace, she manages to make it look effortless.

New York Times
Whimsical, evocative, heartfelt... Synthesizing a blur of images, Hideous Kinky is a song of childhood exile, a paean to the troublesome beauty of life on the run.

London Review of Books
A tour de force.

Spectator
Just open the book and begin, and instantly you will be charmed, then intrigued and finally moved by this fascinating story.

Times Literary Supplement (UK)
Funny and appealing... It has a delightful lightness of being.

Reader Reviews

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Beyond the Book



Sufism and the Hippie Movement

Zaouia door in TamegrouteIn the novel Hideous Kinky, a young mother living in Morocco becomes interested in Sufism and takes her daughter with her to study at a zaouia, or Sufi mosque. Sufism is a form of Islamic mysticism or asceticism popular in some African countries, including Morocco and Senegal, where it is seen as a mystical form of Sunni Islam.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, from the 1950s through the 1970s, many young people from the United States and Britain became fascinated by Eastern religions and flocked to Morocco on spiritual pilgrimages. A number of these counterculture youth were searching for alternatives to the strictures of the religions in which they'd been raised. The route that they followed—from Marrakech north to Tangier ...

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Read-Alikes

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