Hideous Kinky, by Esther Freud

I can see why this strange, disturbing novel had such an impact when first published in 1992. It’s the semi-autobiographical account of a childhood trip to Morocco in the early 1970s, at once exotic adventure and horror story.

In the opening pages, the young narrator is in a van driving from the UK to Marrakech with her elder sister Bea, unnamed Mum, Mum’s boyfriend John and a silent, sullen woman called Maretta who we then learn is John’s wife. The implication, unrecognised by the narrator, is that Maretta is unhappy with the relationship between her husband and the unnamed Mum. There’s something odd and uncomfortable going on, to be teased out by the reader from the narrator’s account. 

The only words the girls have heard Maretta ever say are “hideous” and “kinky”, which they work into the rules of their game of tag, I think unwittingly taunting her. Then Maretta is seriously ill, and covered in lice, and suddenly we learn that John has taken her back to London. Much later, we briefly hear news that Maretta previously suffered the loss of a child but is now pregnant by John again… We don’t hear of them again.

The point is that the narrator shares with us events as they happen — the chaos and feelings and textures of this adventure with her Mum — but doesn’t quite grasp what they mean. As readers, we must deduce the things not said or understood: connections, desires, what characters are escaping. Bit by bit, we piece together that the narrator’s Mum is as much escaping the “rules” laid down by her strict mother in Tunbridge Wells as searching for some kind of freedom or meaning. Yet she depends — desperately — on the connections she’s escaped, reliant on regular payments sent out by the girls’ father.

The effect, I think, is to invite us to pass judgment. Some of what’s described here is very funny, such as the local women who regularly steal clothes from a washing line, including nappies, and then flaunt them whether or not they fit. The children briefly had a pet chicken while living in a hotel; the chicken stalks the other rooms and shits on people's stuff.

But much of what is described made this hapless parent jittery with apprehension. At one point, Bea is seriously ill and fears all her teeth will fall out, and the adults acknowledge that yes, her lips have gone blue — and don’t do much else about it. On another occasion, Mum gives away the previous talcum powder that prevents the narrator’s rash. The narrator can’t read, is prevented from going to school, and is conscious of missing out.

Then Bea refuses to go with Mum and younger sister on yet another jaunt, so stays behind with a neighbour. When Mum and narrator eventually return, days and days later, Bea is no longer where they left her, has spent time living with a man Mum doesn’t even know, and is now somewhere else, ultimately tracked down to the home of a woman who refers to her as an orphan. 

Part of what makes this all so affecting is that the book offers few clues to the ages of the two children, beyond them being very young. In the film version, Bea is eight — younger than my own daughter now — and her sister Lucy (the unnamed narrator of the book) just six. The book is compelling because I found myself worried for their welfare. 

I couldn’t resist the signed copy of this spied in my local Oxfam bookshop, not least because Esther Freud played Threst, one of the Cryons, in Attack of the Cybermen. As a kid, I used to be terrified of that period of Doctor Who; as an adult, a story about a wayward parent with young children in potential peril is way, way more disturbing…