I Couldn't Love You More
A Novel
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4.3 • 14 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A sweeping story of three generations of women, crossing from London to Ireland and back again, and the enduring effort to retrieve the secrets of the past
It’s London, 1960, and Aoife Kelly—once the sparkling object of young men’s affections—runs pubs with her brusque, barking husband, Cash. Their courtship began in wartime London, before they returned to Ireland with their daughters in tow. One of these daughters—fiery, independent-minded Rosaleen—moves back to London, where she meets and begins an affair with the famous sculptor Felix Lehmann, a German-Jewish refugee artist over twice her tender eighteen years. When Rosaleen finds herself pregnant with Felix’s child, she is evicted from her flat, dismissed from her job, and desperate to hide the secret from her family. Where, and to whom, can she turn?
Meanwhile, Kate, another generation down, lives in present-day London with her young daughter and husband, an unsuccessful musician and destructive alcoholic. Adopted and floundering to find a sense of herself in the midst of her unhappy marriage, Kate sets out to track down her birth mother, a search that leads her to a Magdalene Laundry in Ireland and the harrowing history that it holds.
Stirring and nostalgic at moments, visceral and propulsive at others, I Couldn’t Love You More is a tender, candid portrait of love, sex, motherhood, and the enduring ties of family. It is impossible not to fall under the spell of this tale of mothers and daughters, wives and muses, secrets and outright lies.
From Soho to London to Ireland, I Couldn't Love You More is a captivating novel that delves into the complexities of womanhood and feminism, earning it a spot among the best novels about women.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
