Book description
‘The Melrose sequence is now clearly one of the major achievements of
contemporary British fiction. Stingingly well-written and exhilaratingly
funny’ David Sexton,
Evening Standard
At his mother’s family house in the south of France, Patrick Melrose
has the run of a magical garden. Bravely imaginative and
self-sufficient, five-year-old Patrick encounters the volatile lives of
adults with care. His father, David, rules with considered cruelty, and
Eleanor, his mother, has retreated into drink. They are expecting guests
for dinner. But this afternoon is unlike the chain of summer days
before, and the shocking events that precede the guests’ arrival tear
Patrick’s world in two.
‘St Aubyn puts an entire family under a microscope, laying bare all its
painful, unavoidable complexities. At once epic and intimate, appalling
and comic, the novels are masterpieces, each and every one’ Maggie
O’Farrell
‘Nothing about the plots can prepare you for the rich, acerbic comedy
of St Aubyn’s world - or more surprising - its philosophical density’
Zadie Smith, Harpers
‘St Aubyn’s prose has an easy charm that masks a ferocious, searching
intellect. One of the finest writers of his generation’ The Times
Edward St Aubyn was born in London in 1960. His superbly acclaimed
Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope (previously published
collectively as the Some Hope trilogy), Mother's Milk (shortlisted for
the Man Booker Prize 2006) and At Last. He is also the author of the
novels A Clue to the Exit and On the Edge.
