Esther Freud on Hideous Kinky: âMemories came back to me, humorous and chillingâ
The writer was a struggling actor when she began to write about her early childhood on the hippy trail in Morocco
âIn order to write a book, apparently, you had to sit down and actually do itâ ⦠Esther Freud. Photograph: Lydia Goldblatt/The Guardian
âIn order to write a book, apparently, you had to sit down and actually do itâ ⦠Esther Freud. Photograph: Lydia Goldblatt/The Guardian
Sat 5 Jun 2021 07.00 EDT
I was 24 when I signed up for an Arvon creative writing course and set off with 40 pages of what I hoped might be a novel. It was based on my early childhood on the hippy trail in Morocco and was structurally complicated, full of flashbacks, anecdotes and jumps in location. Iâd begun it on another course at the City Lit, where I was encouraged to present a longer piece, breaking the habit of short poems, songs and sketches that had made up a show I pe