Patrick Melrose
6 primary works • 8 total works
Book 1
Book 1
'Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation' Alan Hollinghurst
'The wit of Wilde, the lightness of Wodehouse, the waspishness of Waugh. A joy' Zadie Smith
Acclaimed for their searing wit and their deep humanity, the Patrick Melrose novels are one of the major achievements in English fiction. They follow Patrick through his shattered, savage childhood, his drug-addicted and haunted twenties, and into the complexities of middle age. As he negotiates the death of his parents, the compromises of marriage, and the fraught tenderness of eventual fatherhood, Patrick battles at first to stay ahead of his past, and then to find release from it.
Told with St Aubyn's astonishing precision, incomparable humour, and unnerving insight, Patrick's story - of a man who struggles to live a self-determined life, and who after many years begins to sense the possibility of liberation - takes on a universal resonance.
The boxed set includes Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk, and At Last.
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
WINNER OF THE 2006 SOUTH BANK LITERATURE AWARD
The once illustrious, once wealthy Melroses are in peril. Caught in the wreckage of broken promises, child-rearing, adultery and assisted suicide, Patrick finds his wife consumed by motherhood, his mother consumed by a New Age foundation, and his five-year-old son Robert understanding far more than he ought.
Showcasing Edward St Aubyn's ability to combine the most excruciating emotional pain with the driest comedy, Mother's Milk is a dazzling exploration of the troubled allegiances between parents and children, husbands and wives. Acerbically witty, disarmingly tender, it goes to the core of a family trapped in the remains of its ever-present past.
'So good - so fantastically well-written, profound and humane . . . it is heart-stopping' Observer
'The bravura quality of St Aubyn's performance is irresistible' Sunday Telegraph
'Wonderful caustic wit . . . Polished yet profound, it's even better than his previous work, and that's saying something' Guardian
'Mother's Milk has the cerebral excitement and piercing funniness of St Aubyn at his brilliant best' Tatler
Book 5
At Last is the fifth and final instalment of Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels, adapted for TV for Sky Atlantic and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as aristocratic addict, Patrick.
As friends, relatives and foes trickle in to pay their final respects to his mother Eleanor, Patrick Melrose finds himself questioning whether a life without parents will be the liberation he has so long imagined. Yet as the memorial service ends and the family gathers one last time, amidst the social niceties and the social horrors, the calms and the rapids, Patrick begins to sense a new current: the chance of some form of safety – at last.
