Hideous Kinky

Esther Freud’s Hideous Kinky is what I suspect to be a deceptively simple book.  It’s a simple story told very well.  It’s one of those books in which quite a lot happens, but not much of any importance.  That’s not quite true.  What I mean is, it’s a very episodic told tale from the point of view of a child and as such, the real story’s party obscured from our view.  It’s also interesting as it’s a story set in Morocco in the 1960s and has a wicked feminist slant to it.  I might speak from a place of ignorance here but Morocco isn’t really what springs to mind when one thinks of 1960s feminism.  So it’s a new take on a fairly old subject.

The plot is straightforward.  A terrible mother takes her two daughters to live in Morocco in search of freedom.  Naturally, this awful plan goes just awfully.  From the moment they arrive in Marrakech the mother, Julia, fritters away money in a completely irresponsible manner.  From the get go her two daughters are in search of structure, both are intent on attending school and obtaining a father figure.  The schooling doesn’t really take off but they do pick Bilal, a sometime acrobat who is pretty good with kids and is happy to shack up with their mum.  As the money dwindles Bilal comes and goes from the family’s lives and Julia continuously refuses to take enough responsibility to actually do the right thing and go back to England.  Julia continues to pursue her dreams while her children are suffering.  Even after she almost loses one of them, it still takes a lot to convince her to leave Africa.

As I said before, Hideous Kinky is told from the point of view of a child, the young of Julia’s two daughters, in fact, and Freud is extraordinary at capturing a child’s views in a way that is interesting for adults to read.  Due to the angle that the story is told from, crucial plot points are missed and the reader is left to surmise what has happened.  Julia is a pretty frank mother and so the bits where this becomes really evident are reasons Bilal leaves and returns.  Or, I mean, the lack of reasons.  Aside from one comment about how he could have reached her if he wanted to, we never really find out why he goes.  As adult readers we know it’s because the money’s run out, but our child narrator doesn’t.  Similarly, we discover his return as she searches her mother out in the night, only to find a naked man sleeping in Julia’s bed.  It’s nice way to tell the story, because it allows Julia off the hook.  She is an awful parent, but her children are happy and full of wonder at the delights of Morocco.  They treat what is pretty much neglect as a wonderful adventure, lightening up what would otherwise be an incredibly dark tale.

The setting of Morocco is a part of the child like wonder that the girls feel.  There’s a real sense of travelogue writing and the food described, even the stuff that the family are getting by on when they are terribly poor sounds just delicious.  It’s just loads of fresh fruit and vegetables.  Other than that, it’s an odd choice for a feminist getaway.  There’s one point in which Bilal’s fourteen year-old sister is beaten by her family because she has brought shame to them by removing her veil briefly during a festival.  The only way to rectify this heinous act and ensure she is still marriageable is to beat the crap out of her.  Julia has the decency to be incensed, but it’s all for nothing. It feels like there’s potential there that goes untapped.  Earlier I said that the book’s set in the 1960s, but I know that because of the blurb, not because of the content of the book itself.  Freud may not have included much in the way of politics as Hideous Kinky is told from the view point of a six year-old, but I still expected more.

As I said at the outset of this blog, Freud tells a relatively simply story incredibly well.  In the hands of someone who didn’t know how to make the voice of a child appeal to an adult this could easily be a book for children.  I don’t know exactly what it is that pushes over the line from a kids book to a book about childhood but there’s something.  It’s certainly not in the subject matter, appalling as she is Julia is mother of the year compared to some of Jacqueline Wilson’s creations.  There’s a subtle tone of innocence with only the implications of anything darker that Freud utterly nails and it makes a good old read.

The final of my London coach marathon reads is John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos and should be up soon.