I read this in one insomniac go (last night), it was like eating a whole box of chocolate coated scorpions, crunch crunch, their little exoskeletons shattering on my palate and the poison flooding all my internal organs and me saying mmm-mmm, more please. How Edward St Aubyn managed to dodge my book radar for so long is a mystery, I may have to complain to the shop where I bought it. He's deliciously horrible and horribly delicious. Essentially this is book one of a five-book tone poem of steady More...

St. Aubyn does not, at least in this first book of the series, write especially well from the child’s point of view – and so the notoriously autobiographical rape is somehow less horrifying than it ought to be. Otherwise this is perfect, if at times slight. The prose is cool and pointed. The dialogue is almost never boring. The Melrose marriage made me think of The Portrait of a Lady but the Osmond figure is a real aristocrat, who augments Osmond’s cultured and covert emotional aggression with b More...

She felt tainted and exhausted by a summer of burning up her moral resources for the sake of small conversational effects.

St. Aubyn's first novel--a series now of five, following the Melrose family and a swamp of noisome parasites and lumbering predators in the late twentieth/Cretaceous era of British wealth--steers with wicked confidence toward the same crushing dissipated cynicism noted, with concern, by the novel's one vaguely-heroic character above. (She wonders about her complicity here, ju More...

It is obvious from the very opening paragraphs of Never Mind that St. Aubyn can write with a skillful elegance that summons the descriptor effortless from the vocabular storage banks held recessed in the depths behind one's eyes; and nowhere does this compositional ease display itself more readily than in the dialogue between the handful of English aristocrats and upper-class aspirants, vacationing within the coastal inclines of Provence, who comprise the cast of this early nineties novel. He ca More...

it's kinda like iris murdoch meets bret easton ellis. i can see why everyone's going crazy about this guy (he's very funny and his prose is propulsive and addictive) and i will probably go on to read the rest of the books. on the other hand, all the characters sort of slide into each other, it's very depressing, and the book doesn't really stand on its own. but i look forward to seeing the kinds of hell patrick goes through. and the kinds of hell he inflicts along the way.

Last week (the week of March 12, 2012), I read a review in the New York Times of Edward St. Aubyn's fifth and final entry in a quintet of novels, referred to as The Patrick Melrose Novels. I became so intrigued from the review that I immediately downloaded all five of the books and started at the beginning. I'm so glad I did. Mr. St. Aubyn is a master of the craft of writing, designing sentences that are nearly musical in their balance. His story is not a comfortable one, delving into the worst More...

This strange novel is a fascinating combination of Evelyn Waugh at his nastiest and Oscar Wilde at his wittiest.The author lacerates the English upper and intellectual classes, while restricting his focus to a mere couple of days in which the key setting is a dinner party at a mansion in Provence.For a large part of the time several characters are drunk, drugged, (sometimes both). Almost everyone is deeply depressed and with only a couple of exceptions the characters are vicious, vindictive, and More...

It is all too rare that a book or author is recommended effusively and yet manages to live up to the report. Edward St Aubyn is such a one. One reaches for parallels -- PG Wodehouse crossed with Sam Shepard -- and they impress but still cannot quite elucidate. There is something blistering and yet precise of phrase that places St Aubyn in a direct lineage from Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh. Indeed, there is humor and satire here, but it is defiant, audacious, as telling and objective and intimate More...

I know that a little extra excitement about a book really triggers my hyperbole button and it’s hard to dodge the exclamation points whizzing from my pores, but it’s happened again and I can’t shut up. I loved “Never Mind,” the first book of Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose series. Love-loved. Mind blown, loved. My only regret is that I read it on Kindle, so I wasn’t able to snap it shut, sigh and set it on my bosom. Instead I did a less satisfying flick of a switch, closing of a case, bounce More...

The writing is amazing, as are the author's powers of observation and commentary. A funny thing happened to me when I was reading this book. When I was actually reading it, I was enormously impressed by the author's talent, but when I put it down, I had no desire to get back to it. It took me 4 weeks to read this slim 132 page novel!!! This is because of what happens in the book. I do not want to give things away, but the central character, David Melrose, is an utterly loathsome, depraved charac More...

St. Aubyn's books are generally referred to as a satirical look at the British class system. As I embark on this series of Patrick Melrose novels I find myself reading Book #1 as a horror story.

I am amused by the snarky witticisms St. Aubyn's characters routinely deliver in their studied way.
And, I am simultaneously horrified by the cruelty of the behaviour they exhibit. I won't say I'm not intrigued by the book, but I am grateful it is a slim volume. The nastiness and pettiness of the character More...

This is the first book in a five-part series, and I felt after finishing it that I had really just read an extraordinary introduction to a larger story. Which is not to say that this book is not satisfying in and of itself - it is, deeply so - it just left me ready to immediately plunge into book two (which I did, by the way - with the next review to follow promptly).

I have had two people (one of them my erudite, extremely well-read mother) recently recommend St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose series to More...

Edward St. Aubyn casts judgement on a cold blooded group of English aristocrats and the sad souls that are locked in romantic /family relationships with them. St. Aubyn was apparently raped by his British peer father in real life and his harrowing account of 5 year old Patrick Melrose's violation is brutally cold and almost clinical. The father is a monster but one capable of brittle snarky insults that entertain the reader even as the general behavior of these aristo alcoholic social climbers a More...

Two chapters in and you can tell, St. Aubyn is a revelation. His sentences are of the same 'high wire act' school similar to Ian McEwan, both so reverential to their English predecessors. But my complaint about the book is that at 133 pages, every word, every conversation, every description has to count. And yet a good portion of the chapters stray away to other events that have no impact on the novel as a whole. Switching back and forth between narrators works, but he should have stuck with our More...

The reviews (unanimous in praise, so far as I can tell) compare this to Waugh and, bafflingly, Wodehouse - who to my recollection never featured a rapist as a lead character. I think a closer comparison for this luminously-written tale of terrible people would be Saki, but just imagine having to put up with a typical Saki protagonist for the length of an entire novel, even a short one like this. Worse, imagine that when they've grown up and are beginning to suffer the sneaking suspicion that the More...

We see in the first of the Patrick Melrose novels that Patrick's father, David, is the bad news, the one who will drive Patrick in the next novel to a young manhood of dope-fueled depravity. David is one of the most egregiously unpleasant characters I have encountered in fiction for a while. He makes his wife get down on her knees and eat rotten figs from the ground. He bullies his five-year old son Patrick, spanks him for no reason and then rubs himself against the boy's reddened buttocks until More...

"David grinned. He was in the mood for fun. After all, what redeemed life from complete horror was the almost unlimited number of things to be nasty about."

Well there's no shortage of nasty fun here. I guess I'm a bit late to The Patrick Melrose Novels party, but let me tell you, in the hands of Edward St Aubyn, it's a party that will sicken you one moment and entertain you the next. It's all a very ugly, harrowing hoot!

Truly horrible things happen in Never Mind, and they are delivered to us by More...

My hands were nearly blistered from the heat of the rage coursing just beneath the surface of the dialogue and inner monologues of Aubyn's characters. He may be one of the most brilliant novelists ever to put words in order. I gripped this book too hard in one hand while laughing, aghast, into the other, my mouth hanging open. Deliciously squirm-inducing. It's the British Office and The Comeback and Enlightened and Girls all rolled into one, turned up to eleven, and directed by Oscar Wilde. Than More...

Mid '60's France as some of the most horrid examples of British aristocracy spend a day and an evening. There is no one in this novel you will like. People wake up, chat, pick each other up at the airport, go to a "Wild Oest" theme park, make nasty remarks about others, have dinner, drink way too much, and rape their 5 year old son. St Aubyn is greatly admired by other writers. About 135 pp on my ereader. Despite how loathsome all of these characters are, I am planning to push on to the next nov More...

In this slender first volume of Edward St. Aubyn's five "Patrick Melrose" novels, the author introduces us to the British, ultra-wealthy, yet decaying, lives of David Melrose; his alcoholic American wife, Eleanor; their fearful five-year-old son, Patrick; and a handful of hangers-on friends. It's a dark, cruel world St. Aubyn relates, but we can't help but be captivated--the way it's sometimes hard to look away from a terrible road accident--because of the finely limned interior lives of his cha More...

St. Aubyn is a superb, elegant prose writer - one of those writers indeed whose books, though relatively short, take a disproportionate time to read as one savours each perfectly weighted sentence - and the story of Patrick Melrose as it unfolds over the - now four - series of books is immaculately told and psychologically very astute, as we see Patrick's equally damaged father proceed to wreak havoc on his hapless son who then struggles to achieve adulthood or adult relationships. Original sin More...

And you thought your childhood was tough?

At least you are not Patrick Melrose! From the outside growing up in a small castle in the south of France in the 50s with his aristocratic English parents looks pretty good. But the reality for 5 year old Patrick is anything but good. The first of the five Melrose novels, St Aubyn takes us on a ride to see how the other half really live and it is not a pretty picture. With loads of hilarious comments on life, class and bringing up children, St Aubyn is a More...

Brilliant, nasty satire of the British upper class. Perhaps because the author is so unquestionably a member of said class there is none of that lingering desire to ascend, or to strive upwards. St. Aubyn and his characters have, for the most part, made it. This book is about how horrible it truly is. In an era of the 1%, America needs a St. Aubyn. Or perhaps, we just need to read about Patrick Melrose's truly horrid family and friends. Bravo. Some of the best, most concise and effective writing More...

The Patrick Melrose Novels by St. Aubyn are a series of five short books which follow the life of Patrick from toddlerhood to middle age. They’ve been all the rage in the literary world. In countless author interviews, in answer to that famous question “what are you reading at the moment?” they all said St. Aubyn. They praised the beauty of his prose, the psychological depth of his subject matter, the insight that he had into the human condition. After awhile of reading this, I just had to see w More...

No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too small if it's cherished. - Edward St. Aubyn, Never Mind

I had this book since December but held off on reading it. I've seen the reviews calling it devastating and traumatic, albeit wonderfully written. But after finishing Jane Eyre I needed something a bit more antiseptic, a little sharper to counteract all that sweeping romance.

What's interesting about Never Mind is that the subject *is* difficult, and there are parts that *are* horrific, a More...

Whilst St Aubyn's books were mentioned quite a bit in the Sunday papers when I was a teenager, I'd since forgotten about him or, rather, conflated him with Augusten Burroughs - until last summer when a friend's reviews reminded me.

I have to agree that most of this book is far from enjoyable in the general sense, but it is very good. (I found it nowhere near so intense and draining as some Bergman films, however, and for a moment couldn't decide whether to write this or start the next instalment More...

Man sollte sich von Cover und Klappentext nicht täuschen lassen: So freundlich wie das Buch daher kommt, ist es nämlich nicht, erleben wir doch einen Tag diverser Mitglieder der Upper-Class, die alle nach Gegenseitiger Aufmerksamkeit und Ansehen gieren, hinter vorgehaltener Hand aber tuscheln und lästern.
Allen voran steht dabei David Melrose, sechzigjähriger Misanthrop und Arzt, dem es nicht nur eine Freude ist, Ameisen zu ertränken und zu verbrennen, sondern auch andere zu erniedrigen, sei es s More...

I recently read an interview in the Boston Globe with Michael Chabon, the author. In the interview, Chabon stated that he had recently read the Patrick Melrose novels (there are five in total) by Edward St. Aubyn and he thought that they were fantastic. That was good enough for me to have a go at them and this is the first one in this five book series. It is a satirical look at the wealthy class of England. This first one was very good and I am looking forward to continue and finish the series. More...

I checked out the first 4 patrick melrose books from the library because it has received very good hype. I read the first one, and started the 2nd, at which point I decided that these books were not going to improve.
The novels are about an upper class English family and they are totally loathsome. I thought there would be some humor, some insight, something redeeming. There was not. There is no reason to read these. I did not learn anything, I was not amused, I was not touched. Just horrified. More...