Edward St. Aubyn slices and dices the English upper class in this group of short novels featuring Patrick Melrose. Melrose appears first as a five year old in Never Mind, which details the foolish lives of his parents and a group of their friends in southern France. Bad News is to drug addiction as The Lost Weekend is to alcoholism, as Melrose spends a brutal and degrading several days in New York. Some Hope has a reformed Melrose attending an English country weekend where, again, the upper class (and for whatever reason, Princess Margaret) is exquisitely dissected. In Mother's Milk, a bleak Melrose contemplates his faded marriage and his hated mother's imminent demise. The books are like gems; hard, brilliant and sharp. They are often funny, and the dialogue is so clever as to be occasionally unrealistic. St. Aubyn's style is generally clear, although I will confess there were some sentences I read several times and still could not detect their meaning. But that's a quibble; taken as a group, these novels are excellent. Recommended. These books are not for the faint of heart, but if you love piercing social satire and mordant humor that pulls no punches on sacred targets like family, parenting and class -- this is a gem. The first novella of the five is really a prologue, establishing the protagonist's background. It really gets rolling in book two, and whew! I loved it. I found myself agog with admiration that the author could write humorously about a two-day heroine binge, with lines that made me laugh out loud. But you definitely have to be willing to go there as a reader, and see the comedy and insanity in the clown-car act that is an addict's internal monologue. In each succeeding book, the child from book one moves through life and struggles to figure out his place, or not. But the main appeal is the clever, addictive prose and the protagonist's reflections, which are so mordantly funny and perceptive. There's a high bar set here for bitter, acerbic wit about family life as well as social satire of the decaying upper classes of England. It's definitely a matter of taste, however. I loved it. But you definitely have to be willing to go there as a reader, including to some dark plot points involving child abuse, drug addiction, and repulsive (but hilarious!) rich people. But for a certain type of reader (and you know who you are) the payoff is, well, rich.
What do You think about Patrick Melrose Novels (2012)?
best writing I've read in a long time. anyone missing EM Forester should pick this up.
—puppy123
Best book of the year. Astonishing writing on every line.
—GrapeNerd
