Esther Freud shares her favourite books on sisterhood

Esther Freud’s new novel, “My Sister and Other Lovers”, is out now and she will be speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 21 August.

Little House on the Prairie

Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1935

This was read to me as a child. I loved the idea that the author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was the same Laura we were meeting as “Half Pint”, and I was intrigued to think she was seeing her life in terms of a story, just as I was seeing mine. I can still remember sitting wedged in beside my sister, my heart thumping when Laura’s own sister falls ill with scarlet fever.

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Gone With the Wind

Margaret Mitchell, 1936

I was a late reader and by the time I did learn (aged ten), I was hungry for any available book. That’s how I found myself so caught by this sweeping saga that when selfish, headstrong Scarlett sets her sights on her quieter, plainer sister’s fiancé, and takes him for herself, I threw the book across the room, only to have to doggedly retrieve it.

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott, 1868

I loved the depiction of the March sisters and their different, often clashing, personalities. Who was I in relation to Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy? Which most reflected my siblings? Much as I adored it, I took against “Good Wives” with a violence that has made me wary of sequels to this day.

Cassandra at the Wedding

Dorothy Baker, 1962

This is a brilliantly dark description of the bond, and the efforts to maintain it, of one half of a pair of twins. Cassandra is a divisive and unreliable narrator, posing the question: do we need to be on the side of our main character?

Sorrow and Bliss

Meg Mason, 2020

The sister relationship in this novel is not just witty and full of affection, but provides the thread between tormented, childless Martha and practical, mother-of-four Ingrid. Their bond is one of the many highlights of a moving and deeply funny book.