It looks like a book and feels like a book, but leaves you with the sickly and tragic feeling of having eaten too many cheap pralines. At first I thought it must have been written for the teenage market.
The story is told by a slinky, beautiful teenage girl called Lara, who accompanies her father Lambert on a trip to Tuscany. Lambert is the stereotypically awkward academic who always abandoned her for his work, and continues to do so. Lara falls in love with a young heir called Kip. Also prominently featured is a sparkly blue pool where a grotesque menagerie of tanned upper-class caricatures bump and scrape mechanically against each other.
The action is interspersed with pointless digressions about Lara’s childhood adventure on the Budget Bus to India, and life with her mother on a Tibetan commune in Scotland. I get the feeling that Esther Freud has a filing tab headed ‘fillers’. The initial plan for the book probably read something like this: ‘A poor, socially conscientious teenage girl is thrown into a millionaire’s villa in Tuscany. To show teenage insecurity, have her look critically at her body in the mirror, and hesitate when people ask her questions. If in doubt, throw in some left-over memories from the bus to India. Note to self: make sure I haven’t used the India stuff before.’
‘Love Falls’ does Freud a disservice. It has some pretty scenes and phrases, but lacks real people and narrative drive. Lara’s feelings remain unexamined and unresolved. Where’s the depth, intelligence and inquisitive insight of Freud’s early work?
