RaveThe GuardianThough written in three timelines – each mostly compelling in their own right – this is Kate’s story. But to what extent are our stories ever our own? ... It is tempting to map Freud’s real-life family (tempestuous sculptor Lucian, for example) on to the novel’s complex interplay of characters, but to pin this book down as autobiographical does it a great disservice. I Couldn’t Love You More is a crafted novel, made with great skill and attention, the way Felix makes his sculptures, the way Kate makes her painted trees ... You want, instinctively, to say that this is a book of echoes, but nothing could be further from the truth. Things are much more real than echoes. Each generation of women lives wholly, not merely as shadows of the other but completely themselves. The novel is about the patterns of being in this one family; and the patterns of being a woman; and the patterns of being a person, wherever and whenever we are alive.
