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Never Mind (The Patrick Melrose Novels #1)

3.77 of 5 stars 3.77 · rating details · 719 ratings · 138 reviews

In the first Patrick Melrose novel, five-year-old Patrick encounters the volatile lives of adults. His father rules with considered cruelty and 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.

Kindle Edition, 208 pages

Published April 12th 2012 by Picador (first published 1992)

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Nov 25, 2012 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

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

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Feb 16, 2013 Eric rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ficciones, hearts-laid-bare, lurid

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 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 barbaric seigneurial outrages. An American poseur, Osmond could imitate aristocracy's fine anesthetized contempt, but not its primal license: to kill and fuck with impunity. Benedetta Craveri said that when the French nobles could no longer be warlords they became tastemakers. David Melrose is one such versatile monster – bel esprit and naturel grafted on a rapist bully. His conversation is intricate blood-sport. He poisons or subdues everyone around him. He will menace you, with his penis or his manners.

His disdain for vulgarity included the vulgarity of wanting to avoid the appearance of being vulgar. In this more esoteric game, he recognized only a handful of players...

St. Aubyn invokes the licentiousness of the emperors – Suetonius is David’s favorite reading and the psychology of Caligula a dinner party discussion – but the controlled cruelty of the Nazi doctors is not far behind.

David held the burning tip of his cigar close to the ants…the ants twisted, excruciated by the heat, and dropped down onto the terrace. Some, before they fell, reared up, their stitching legs trying helplessly to repair their ruined bodies. “What a civilized life you have here,” Bridget sang out as she sank back into a dark-blue deckchair.

Disinherited and defiant of his family David had found in medicine a salaried excuse for experimental sadism and lofty diagnostic contempt – and he practiced until he married a wealthy American woman, Eleanor, who having surrendered her money to this titled brute now cowers in a cave of booze and pills, her bathroom a “pharmaceutical paradise,” while he belches fire outside. It’s the plot of a typical bodice-ripper – adventurous naïveté, meet restraintless privilege - but set a decade after the first, fun ravishing, and with, you know, realistic, bored spouses – and helpless offspring. I knew I had to read St. Aubyn when Alan Hollinghurst called him “terrifyingly good.” This went down easy. On to volume 2!

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Mar 11, 2012 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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May 17, 2012 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 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 captures the tone, cadence, and expressiveness of English privilege with a precision that is nuanced and natural; and the amount of malice and venom that can be compressed within an offhand remark, or succinct bon mot, is indicative of the spontaneously cruel and witty craftsmanship required of those who would joust amongst the colloquial alpha society of Island Blue Bloods. It is the best sort of writing, in its way, graceful and lithe, adeptly placed, paced, and proportioned without ever being overly ornate or dauntingly dense—quality matched with clarity throughout.

But I have to admit, I've got problems with this, to the degree that, having finished Never Mind, I am going to be returning St. Aubyn's collection to the futures market. Why is this the case? For me, it is the story itself, in that the material appears to neither match nor merit the quality with clarity that St. Aubyn proves so judicious in meting out. Never Mind presents the reader with an (abbreviated) day in the opulent but idle existence of the Melrose family—cruel, manipulative, and charismatic David, the father; the neurotic and ambidextrously-addicted mother, Eleanor; and their five year old son, Patrick, victim to both his mother's cringing self-absorption, anxieties and careless neglect and his father's sadistic determination to disabuse his son, often brutally, of any illusions the child may be harbouring about innocence. Converging upon this thoroughly gruesome domestic idyll are a pair of couples—one bearing a representative from the debased English aristocracy—Nicholas Pratt, a soft and rather ridiculous fop whose jocose self-deprecation serves to shield his personal diminution around David Melrose—and Pratt's current youthful bedmate; the other an established English academic who desires to ascend from being a middle-class jew into the ranks of the upper tier—though the price of admission apparently requires cultivating their same monstrous mannerisms and cutting snobbery—and his American wife, a reasonably sensible woman immune to the Old World upper-crust charms of David Melrose and his coterie.

The Melrose household is a toxic environment, a microcosm of the peculiar olio of self-confidence and self-loathing, pride and despair, amused detachment and confused alienation, boundless good-taste and grotesque over-indulgence, that has been the daily repast for those wealthy beyond all measure and who yet have no meaning in their lives, no responsibilities or obligations to fulfill beyond gratifying their indolent inclinations. In particular, there is a pecking order in which members in good standing are shuffled about as tongues perform their lashings, and arrivistes endure humiliation in order to dish out the same to those they have been elevated sufficient to look down upon. And this is a goodly portion of the novel. Nothing much happens other than our intrusive eavesdropping upon this select environ of a degenerate aristocracy, whose life of luxury—quite often attained through adroit marriages between financially strained noble scions with the appropriate heiresses of capitalist riches—has only served to strip them of all discernible or revealable traces of human desire, dreams, or feeling; the result being the ritualistic, banal, death-by-a-thousand-quips routine of clubbing and dinner parties where the top dogs maul their nervous inferiors when both are not combined in savaging friends and acquaintances who have the (mis)fortune not to be present. In this slim story, the few chapters spared to Patrick seem insufficient—we are introduced to this profoundly lonely and disturbingly angry child, observe him suffer a stomach-churning assault from his father and then burn in hostile resentment from various places of concealment for the remainder; it's enough to merit shock and sympathy, but generalized and without anything more. The part about Victor, the academic aspirant, and his writer's block within this circle he is trying to square, is equally sparsely set. It was enjoyable to read, in a manner, but there was really very little substance to it. It is a beautifully designed shell constructed around a hollow core.

I must be getting old. Or perhaps, having surrounded myself with the towering ranks of thousands of books all making their shelf- or stack-bound pleas for a turn in the spotlight, I'm becoming unwilling to pass that increasingly precious reading time upon material that doesn't strike me in whatever mood I happen to be in. These days I'm hard-pressed at work and basking in the unexpected, but gloriously appreciated, arrival of stunningly beautiful weather, in which such depressing and, ultimately, pointless fictional forays fail to exert the allure they might have done had this book been attempted back when the sun had been taken into witness protection against the omnipresent lowering clouds and endless pissing rain. Whatever the truth behind the situation, I believe I shall pass on presently resuming the tale of Patrick Melrose, the poor little rich kid. It's nothing against St. Aubyn's skills or his presentation, but rather that the story he has chosen herein to tell—amusing and clever and horrific though it be—merely elicits a shoulder-shrugging so what?(less)

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May 05, 2013 Ben Loory rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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.

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Mar 23, 2012 Lori rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

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

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May 13, 2013 Eastbelt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Feb 09, 2013 T rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Jan 01, 2013 christa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 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 out of bed exclaiming: “THAT WAS AMAZING!”

This was the perfect mix of being exactly the book I wanted to read at that exact moment and, well, just so, so great. It’s a single day in the lives of a handful of upper class sorts living in England and it glides from perspective to perspective so you see the inner workings of David Melrose, a total asshole, non-practicing doctor who is supported by his wife’s wealth-through-birth. His wife, Eleanor, is an American who steadies herself with a constant mix of booze and pills. Their son, Patrick, is the star of this series. He is five in this book and is shaping up to be a bit of a bully, a bit of a daredevil and, by the end of the story, the victim of one of the more terrible scenes I’ve read. (I’m guessing this scene has been a series-breaker for some readers).

There is Anne, also an American, the novel’s conscience and her partner, Victor, a philosopher who is struggling to write a book about identity without considering psychology. Daniel is a younger party guest, oft-married, flying in for a party at the Melrose house. He’s brought a shallow, albeit wily young stoner girlfriend along for the ride.

The day will include just a trip to the airport -- with a detour to an amusement park, a violent episode, and one of the most uncomfortable dinner parties in the history of forks. And it’s all written in this incredibly detailed way that unfolds like scenes in a play and includes witty dialogue and something just short of caricature-style descriptions. These people are real and awful and they are seen writing checks to charity as well as doing the math on what kind of pill combo, washed down with liquor, it will take to drive the car.

This is a super shorty that was put together as part of a collection that includes the first four of the five books from this series. It’s also available as a novella-length single, which is fun. It’s also well-documented that these stories have a touch of autobiography to them and it’s also well-documented that St. Aubyn is a bit socially prickly, although every interview I’ve read with him has made him sound like my favorite kind of socially prickly character, the kind I can’t decide if I love or hate.

After finishing “Never Mind,” a glass of water, a pee break and snack, I immediately dipped into the second book of the series, which is so completely different it hardly seems from the same family. Patrick Melrose, now in his 20s, now seems to have a story that rings closer to the Bret Easton Ellis/Jay McInernay family. While it was off-putting at first to walk into something so completely different, I guess his ability to completely switch up tone, style and approach is admirable. Whatever, it’s still early. I’ll report back. (less)

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Sep 24, 2012 Kat rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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May 12, 2012 Nancy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Mar 27, 2013 Nikki Shaver rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: british

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

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Jul 05, 2012 Rick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Feb 20, 2013 Jody rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Jul 17, 2012 Alex Sarll added it

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

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Apr 04, 2013 Ron added it · review of another edition

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

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Mar 20, 2012 William rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"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

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Feb 10, 2013 Aaron Hartzler rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

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

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Sep 01, 2012 Paula Maguire rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Sep 13, 2012 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Mar 25, 2012 Momo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Mar 23, 2013 Brunhilde rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Feb 17, 2013 Gail rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Mar 28, 2012 Will Clarke rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

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

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Apr 23, 2013 Kelly Massry rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 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 what the fuss was about. Rather than read them in the physical book format shown above (the first is a compilation of the first 4 books – about 600 pages all together; the second is the last installment, which just came out in paperback) I downloaded each book on my Nook for 4.99 a piece.

In the first book we meet Patrick, a vulnerable toddler who’s at the mercy of his sadistic, violent and pedophiliac father. The scene in which Patrick gets raped by his father was excruciating to read – it’s a line of abuse that doesn’t stop for years and turns Patrick, in the second book, into a raging, out-of control drug addict. Seriously, the second book is the most harrowing account of drug addiction that I’ve ever read. I had to put the book down several times, unsure I could continue. I was positive Patrick would OD before the book was through and until then I just couldn’t see him inflict anymore harm on himself. I’m really not sure why I finished the book – it was a feat of perseverance considering the subject matter is so inherently distasteful to me. Perhaps I was so worried about him I had to keep reading in spite of it all – which is the mark of a good storyteller, isn’t it?

At the end of the second book Patrick is alive but barely. I was ready to do away with the series until I started reading the third book and discovered that somewhere in that time lapse Patrick had gone to a clinic and recovered from his addiction. Oh, good, I said. He’s off the drugs – maybe I can bear reading this one. With the language toned down and not nearly as much at stake I imagined I could process it without flinching every five minutes – and I was just the tiniest bit curious to see how he’d get on now without drugs ruining his existence. Indeed in this book, Patrick struggles to get along in high society. He’s not nearly as rich as he was, having spent most of his parentally-given money on drugs and he toys with sex addiction but never quite gets there. I’d say this book is the blandest of the series – but bland is ok considering what came before!

In the fourth book, Patrick is married with a family – a wife and two sons. This book was my favorite by far. We get the perspective of every family member and there are so many interesting observations about infancy (one of his sons narrates as a newborn who’s just come out of the womb) sibling rivalry, motherhood, fatherhood and marriage. Patrick and Mary do not have a good marriage – firstly because Patrick is addicted to alcohol and still plagued by his upbringing and secondly because Mary has no libido whatsoever and is attached to her sons to the exclusion of her husband. It seems Patrick wishes she can mother him and is almost jealous of the love and attention she gives his children. Still, Patrick is a much better father than his ever was, which is nice to see and his sons are observant, witty and from all appearances undamaged. So regardless of his addiction problems the reader gives kudos to Patrick for imparting his sons with healthy psyches.

The last book takes place at Patrick’s mother’s funeral. Eleanor did nothing to stop the abuse Patrick received as a boy – in fact, she seemed completely ignorant of it. This is interesting because she spends much of her life doing charity work for less fortunate children (organizations like Save the Children Fund, though she couldn’t save her own.) In the last years of her life, Eleanor became increasingly incompetent as she whittled away in a nursing home. Patrick has never looked kindly on either of his parents but in this book he really struggles to find a way to forgive them and come to peace with himself. I won’t give away his epiphany, because it bears reading for yourself, but this book ends on a very satisfying note. Because Patrick does reach closure and the reader understands exactly how he got there, though it seemed so improbable at the start. By the end ofAt Last, the reader can part with Patrick and feel good about doing so, knowing he is going to be okay. This is a state St. Aubyn quite masterfully achieves. Never did I think, going through life with the Patrick of the first and second books, that he’d be able to let go of so much bitterness and hate, but alas he engages in an admirable inner struggle that leaves him wiped out and at peace. At the end of it all, the reader feels the same way: thoroughly exhausted by Patrick’s travails but cleansed and renewed somehow.

I can’t recommend these books to just anyone. In fact, I think most people won’t be able to stomach them (can’t believe I even did!) but if you’re up for it, the journey, though a bit topsy-turvy, is rewarding in the end.

~Kelly Massry(less)

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May 19, 2013 Katrina Atienza rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 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, and yet it is immensely readable: at the end I wanted to get the rest of the Melrose novels to find out what happens next -- pretty nutty for something that I put off reading for five months.

St. Aubyn says "I have spent 22 years trying to transform painful experience into pleasurable reading," and that effort shows in cool, deceptively simple yet laceratingly on point prose. I almost hate that I have this in paperback instead of Kindle because there are so many lines that I want to mark up and underline (and I'm not a fan of marginalia at all) but it seems a crime to deface such a pretty book.

The story is simple enough: on a home in southwest France, an upper-class family is preparing for dinner with friends. That premise, unfolding over a day as with a play, lays bare all the hollowness and pretensions and maliciousness of the characters; an indictment of class if there ever was one. This can be a tiresome exercise, but what saves it from devolving into farce is an undercurrent of real pain and real insight underneath all the character dissections. Towards the end of the book the philosopher Victor, who is trying to write a book about identity without including psychology, that the unconscious -- which we can only talk about once the state of unconsciousness ends -- is unreliable at best and a place of ignorance at worst; looking to psychology as a barometer of identity is foolish. Although he is airily dismissed by one of the other characters, failed politician Nicholas, I can't help but dwell on his statement as the key towards understanding the book, and St. Aubyn as well. St. Aubyn shows us, in brief but piercing flashbacks, the events that shaped each character, but the passage with Victor seems to also indicate that however much trauma and history has a hand in developing identity, ultimately it comes to choice. David Melrose chooses to be cruel and evil. Eleanor Melrose chooses to be passive, to be trapped in a cage that no self-respecting person should bear. Each person chooses to be monstrous, sometimes simply because making another choice is just too much effort. This, and the line quoted above, said by the character Anne (Victor's girlfriend) also seems to make a point: we all go through hell. So what? It's not a license to terrify, as one has been terrified (David, explaining Caligula to Anne).

So you see, this book gets under your skin and into your mind. Can't wait to get my hands on the next in the series, even if I know it's going to be uncomfortable. (less)

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Apr 19, 2013 Antonomasia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Antonomasia by: Alex Sarll

Shelves: modern-british-fiction, psychology, 2013, kindle, nineties

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

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Mar 07, 2011 Zit rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

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

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Nov 21, 2012 Edward rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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.

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Nov 09, 2012 Deborah rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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.

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About Edward St. Aubyn

Edward St Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He was educated at Westminster school and Keble college, Oxford University. He is the author of six novels, the most recent of which, ‘Mother’s Milk’, was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, won the 2007 Prix Femina Etranger and won the 2007 South Bank Show award on literature.

His first novel, ‘Never Mind’ (1992) won the Betty Trask award. This no...more

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“In my rather brief medical practice,' said David modestly, 'I found that people spend their whole lives imagining they are about to die. Their only consolation is that one day they're right.” — 1 person liked it

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Never Mind (The Patrick Melrose Novels #1)

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