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Judging by the goodreads reviews (which are usually very reliable), this book seems to have been mis-marketed. Readers complain that the characters are unpleasant (which you should know going in, I admit) and that St. Aubyn is 'too much of a stylist,' which sounds to me like saying a composer is 'too musical' or a basketball player is 'too athletic.' From a straight description, you might think this is akin to, say Gerard Woodward's semi-autobiographical trilogy: addiction, family issues, well-w...
This book challenged the convention of believability in using POV. The book opens with a chapter narrated by a five-year old boy, Robert Melrose thinking and having insights of that of an intelligent adult. At first, it threw me off. Unbelievable. Who did St. Aubyn think he was? Augusten Burroughs? It took me a while before I reopened the book. I said to myself, there must be something in here. This was shortlisted in 2005 Booker Prize and a recent addition to the 1001 Books You Must Read Before...
#4 is as hard to rate as the rest, being like them wildly uneven. At least to my taste. In Mother's Milk the characters around Patrick Melrose are no good at all, vague, phoned-in, not-quite-there; boring. But from Patrick's point of view St Aubyn's prose rockets into Cioran-ish heights of nihilist lyricism. The "sardonic harmonies" of the stupid generations are ever more obvious to our extending lifespans and bored, self-devouring domestic over-analysis. Vistas of futility, illuminated further
Another five star read from Edward St. AubynIt is as a cumulative experience that these Patrick Melrose novels work best. There's little point just reading one as the experience only really makes sense if you treat the five short Patrick Melrose novels as one long book *Mother's Milk (along with the rest of the Patrick Melrose novels) shares a clear lineage to both Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh which, as you don't need me to tell you, is a very positive thing.In Mother's Milk we jump ahead to
After what looked like an emotional breakthrough at the end of Some Hope, here we find Patrick embroiled in another - or the same? - bleak emotional landscape. It's now 2000, he's acquired a wife, now pregnant, and a 5-year old son in the break between books and the status of fatherhood leads him, perhaps inevitably, back to his own disturbed childhood: 'I'm not in any serious doubt that everything I'm going through at the moment corresponds with the texture of my infancy in some way'. Widening
I read Never Mind and had to keep stopping to copy down sentences because I couldn't bear to let them go. St Aubyn lacerates you with the taut-wire strength of his prose and intellect - the book is profoundly beautiful and profoundly shocking. Part of the shock with all of them is one's own complicity. Bad News is a tour de force of writing and experience - that is the emptiest of reviews, so I would just say, go and read it. You feel drowned in someone else's perception. Some Hope made me feel
Whew...if you start the St Aubyn (what is the word for 1 after a trilogy?) series at the first book and read through, the character's journey from abuse to drugs to misanthropy to redemption is unlike anything I've ever read. It's on a par with Waugh for meanness and wit and flow - and that's high praise - but unlike Waugh he has a genuine conscience and wants to understand his and his character's processes. The degradation and deep amusement at the worst aspects of everyone in the first four bo...
Number four in the series and Patrick is married with children. The start of this book is amazing when we meet Patrick's first child, Robert. Really it is all nonsense as no child could possibly be like this but the writing is so beautiful and the ideas so lovely. Robert quickly became my favourite character. I was hoping that Patrick would finally find himself in this book but he has not. Understandable really as there is still one more book to go. Can't wait!
"Did you know," said Patrick, addressing Seamus again, "that among the caribou herdsmen of Lapland, the top shaman gets to drink the urine of the reindeer that has eaten the magic mushrooms, and his assistant drinks the urine of the top shaman, and so on, all the way down to the lowest of the low who scramble in the snow, pleading for a splash of twelfth-generation caribou piss?""I didn't know that," said Seamus flatly."I thought it was your special field," said Patrick, surprised. "Anyhow, the
Really enjoyed this! It's clever, funny ... but it loses a star because the author faithfully touches all the familiar moans of British anti-Americanism. Americans are fat and can't fit into aeroplane seats! American food is revolting, and the pizzas not as good as European ones! American TV is mindless! Baseball is boring! Everyone who works in the American service industry pretends to be cheerful! The American approach to health and safety is infantilising! American millionaires are vulgar and...
