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Patrick Melrose #4
Mother's Milk
Now a 5-Part Limited Event Series on Showtime, Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Blythe Danner
Man Booker–shortlisted Mother's Milk, the fourth installment in Edward St. Aubyn's wonderful, wry, and profound Patrick Melrose Cycle, sees Patrick as a lawyer, married, with a five-year-old child and another on the way. The novel shifts points of view from Patrick—furious over his mother's decision to sell their mansion in the South of France to a ridiculous New Age hippie—to Patrick's wife, overburdened by motherhood, to Patrick's mother, growing senile and despondent, and even to Patrick's young son Robert, who reflects with hilarious and disturbing clarity on the moments of his birth.
289 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 11, 2005
233 people are currently reading
5493 people want to read
About the author
Edward St. Aubyn
35 books1,218 followersEdward 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 novel, along with ‘Bad News’ (1992) and ‘Some Hope’ (1994) became a trilogy, now collectively published under the title ‘Some Hope’.
His other fiction consists of ‘On the Edge’ (1998) which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize and A Clue to the Exit (2000).
His first novel, ‘Never Mind’ (1992) won the Betty Trask award. This novel, along with ‘Bad News’ (1992) and ‘Some Hope’ (1994) became a trilogy, now collectively published under the title ‘Some Hope’.
His other fiction consists of ‘On the Edge’ (1998) which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize and A Clue to the Exit (2000).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 630 reviews
August 4, 2012
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-written etc. From the blurbs, you might think it's a soap opera (Sam Lipsyte couldn't do better than 'harrowing entertainment'? I guess it's 'entertainment' if you assume that serious art is only produced in American MFA programs).
So, prospective reader, know that St. Aubyn's work is a salad, and that the ingredients are:
* Proust's essayistic novel form. As with Proust, you have to read carefully.
* Wilde's utterly unrealistic, yet brilliant, dialogue. As with Wilde, he's sometimes too clever for his own good.
* Waugh's ambivalent upper class satire.
* Richard Yates' beautifully styled misanthropy. As with Yates, it can all get a little tiring.
This is not to say he's the next Proust or Wilde, of course. But he's at least on a level with Yates.
This novel is beautifully and intelligently crafted. The opening section - told through the eyes of a 5 year old - should be ridiculously quirky, but is one of the best thirty or so pages published so far this century in English. St Aubyn clearly knows that the whole thing could be disastrous, and plays around with this fact. The shifting points of view throughout the novel are quite knowing, as well; St Aubyn refuses to insult his readers' intelligence by dumbing his work down and using old moves from the realism rulebook. At the same time, he holds on to what is valuable in the realistic tradition: a respect for the world outside of literature, the great potential of ironic narration, and the ability to put his readers into perspectives they ordinarily would not take up.
In short: an almost ideal blend of self-reflection, social thought and artistry.
The prose is so clear that it's often too easy to read: take your time, and try to understand exactly what's going on. It helps to have read the other books in the series, but it's probably not necessary. If you know this stuff going in, you'll hopefully get more out of the book than some reviewers seem to have done.
So, prospective reader, know that St. Aubyn's work is a salad, and that the ingredients are:
* Proust's essayistic novel form. As with Proust, you have to read carefully.
* Wilde's utterly unrealistic, yet brilliant, dialogue. As with Wilde, he's sometimes too clever for his own good.
* Waugh's ambivalent upper class satire.
* Richard Yates' beautifully styled misanthropy. As with Yates, it can all get a little tiring.
This is not to say he's the next Proust or Wilde, of course. But he's at least on a level with Yates.
This novel is beautifully and intelligently crafted. The opening section - told through the eyes of a 5 year old - should be ridiculously quirky, but is one of the best thirty or so pages published so far this century in English. St Aubyn clearly knows that the whole thing could be disastrous, and plays around with this fact. The shifting points of view throughout the novel are quite knowing, as well; St Aubyn refuses to insult his readers' intelligence by dumbing his work down and using old moves from the realism rulebook. At the same time, he holds on to what is valuable in the realistic tradition: a respect for the world outside of literature, the great potential of ironic narration, and the ability to put his readers into perspectives they ordinarily would not take up.
In short: an almost ideal blend of self-reflection, social thought and artistry.
The prose is so clear that it's often too easy to read: take your time, and try to understand exactly what's going on. It helps to have read the other books in the series, but it's probably not necessary. If you know this stuff going in, you'll hopefully get more out of the book than some reviewers seem to have done.
March 20, 2025
Quienes hayan leído «El padre» — las tres primeras novelas de esta magnífica pentalogía de Edward ST. Aubyn sobre Patrick Melrose, alter ego del autor— ya saben la forma en la que sus padres le jodieron la vida.
Ahora, tras superar contra todo pronóstico una juventud dilapidada entre drogas y excesos de todo tipo, Patrick está casado y tiene dos hijos, ambos, como si de una compensación del destino se tratara, con un encanto y una inteligencia precoz abrumadora. De sus padres solo queda la parte femenina, pero esta se basta y se sobra para mantenerlo en las más altas cimas de la desesperación.
“La mayoría esperan la muerte de sus padres con una mezcla de tremenda tristeza y planes para construir una piscina nueva… Puesto que voy a tener que renunciar a la piscina, he pensado que también podría saltarme la tristeza.”Continuando con su larga labor filantrópica de salvar a todo ser humano siempre que no forme parte de su propia familia, la madre de Patrick ha decidido regalar toda su fortuna a un supuesto chamán sin escrúpulos, lo que ya viene siendo una vieja tradición en la familia. Patrick no solo tiene que ejecutar las órdenes de su madre, además teme que con ello no pueda atender sus responsabilidades como es debido, incluidos los caros cuidados que precisa la madre.
“Estaba obsesionado con detener el flujo de veneno que corría de generación en generación, pero tenía la impresión de haber fracasado. Decidido a no infligir a sus hijos las causas de su propio sufrimiento, no lograba protegerlos de sus consecuencias”Efectivamente, le preocupa el futuro de sus hijos, consciente de “la influencia destructiva que los padres ejercían en sus hijos” y aunque este no fuera el caso de Mary, la madre perfecta… quizás demasiado. “A Patrick le correspondía el nada envidiable papel de José en aquel Belén insoportable”, y aunque no tenía muchos problemas en encontrar sexo sustitutivo, este no sustituía adecuadamente.
“El recurso irónico de rechazar a la clase de mujer que habría sido mala madre… eligiendo a una que era tan buena madre que era incapaz de permitir que ni una sola gota de su amor no fuera a parar a sus hijos.”En definitiva, tenemos a Patrick desheredado por una madre que solo atiende a sus egoístas necesidades espirituales y que ahora le enfrenta al dilema moral de la eutanasia, casado con otra madre 24/7 y batallando con unas responsabilidades paternales que no cree afrontar con éxito. Su única defensa es el Tamazepan y todo el alcohol que pueda conseguir.
“Siento la debilidad de lo que controlo rodeado por la inmensidad de todo cuanto escapa a mi control”La novela se divide en capítulos que cuentan las vacaciones de agosto que la familia pasa durante cuatro años sucesivos, algunos en la casa que la familia tiene en el sur de Francia y que están a punto de perder a manos del chamán, siempre rodeados de esnobs tan cómicos como repelentes. Este es el panorama que nos pinta Edward St. Aubyn con su acostumbrada inteligencia, mala leche, saber aforístico y humor venenoso.
“El ingenio de Wilde, la ligereza de Wodehouse y la clase de Waugh. Una delicia” Zadie SmithSi se la pierden, allá ustedes.
December 4, 2020
The next instalment of the story of Patrick Melrose. After learning about his childhood and his appalling father in the first book we now see him as a married man. Though he makes a concerted effort to be a good father he's, not surprisingly, a pretty awful husband and soon falls prey to adultery and alcoholism. He's also constantly indulging a tendency towards self-pity which was the subject of a fair bit of the overwriting in this novel - extravagant firework displays commemorating unworthy emotional milestones. His mother has left the family house in France to a cult of new age happy clappers - no surprise that St Aubyn has nothing but scorn for these people and dishes out to them some of his most acerbic wit. The best character for me is the precocious youngest son, Thomas - one of the best portraits of a child I've ever read. On the whole tremendously engaging and sometimes very funny. 4+ stars.
March 1, 2022
Patrick Melrose is 42, a London barrister (= pretty rich), married with 2 sons, and has a terrible time of things. This is a feel-bad novel, which you already knew it would be if you read any of the previous Patrick Melrose novels. He is not the cheery poster boy for embracing life and loving it, he is the ex heroin addict with a horrible past and a nearly unbearable present.
Edward St Aubyn fritters away his great gifts as a brilliant prose stylist and sculptor of boilingly icy dialogue on a whole lot of tired old stuff we have read a million novels about already : psychological observations of the married middleclass male, his struggles with fatherhood, his struggles with alcohol, his struggles with his penis, his adultery, his mid life crisis thing – and just to gain the reader’s total sympathy, Patrick’s main problem in this book is how his mother has given away the family chateau in France to some new age charitable foundation dedicated to drum banging and past life retrieval and fiddling about with people’s souls which is run by a dippy Irishman who is not at all as dim as he looks.
(As well as new age fads, Patrick/Edward spends his big vocabulary trashing other easy targets, like fat Americans, rich Americans, American motels – all this is tiresome. )
A lot of Mother’s Milk is taken up by intensely detailed accounts of infancy, and once again, we have kind of had this a lot before. Although his device of making the five year old talk like a thirtyfive year old is kinda funny.
But this is really the father’s story. Patrick Melrose writhes in great spasms of disappointment the whole time. I would guess that none of this is something us readers will be shedding big jewel-like tears over. Oh oh oh, this huge French house should be mine, mine mine - I mean ours, dear. He is already rich enough, on what planet should he be even richer?
We have to read Mother’s Milk for something other than an interesting plot or engaging sympathetic characters or unusual subjects. It’s the last place you would look.
Instead we get unremitting and highly, highly entertaining nastiness. Reviewers call this novel venomous, caustic, sardonic, scathing and ascerbic, and I do not disagree. Untrammeled self-loathing male arrogance has rarely been more elegantly spewed forth :
He could live without her as long as he knew that she couldn’t live without him. That was the deal the furiously weak made between their permanent disappointment and their temporary consolation.
If he had one thing to say to the world, it was this : never, never have a child without first getting a reliable mistress.
He envied the male spider who was eaten straight after fertilizing the female, rather than consumed bit by bit like his human counterpart.
Very occasionally our author allows Patrick’s wife one of these one-liners. They are staying in a motel and she is thinking about its delights :
And a machine down the corridor whose shuddering ejaculations of ice reminded her unwillingly of the state of her marriage
It’s a shame we didn’t get to the part where she kicks out this drunken motormouth Olympic gold standard self-pitier.
3.5 stars for all the great you-can’t-say-that! moments.
Edward St Aubyn fritters away his great gifts as a brilliant prose stylist and sculptor of boilingly icy dialogue on a whole lot of tired old stuff we have read a million novels about already : psychological observations of the married middleclass male, his struggles with fatherhood, his struggles with alcohol, his struggles with his penis, his adultery, his mid life crisis thing – and just to gain the reader’s total sympathy, Patrick’s main problem in this book is how his mother has given away the family chateau in France to some new age charitable foundation dedicated to drum banging and past life retrieval and fiddling about with people’s souls which is run by a dippy Irishman who is not at all as dim as he looks.
(As well as new age fads, Patrick/Edward spends his big vocabulary trashing other easy targets, like fat Americans, rich Americans, American motels – all this is tiresome. )
A lot of Mother’s Milk is taken up by intensely detailed accounts of infancy, and once again, we have kind of had this a lot before. Although his device of making the five year old talk like a thirtyfive year old is kinda funny.
But this is really the father’s story. Patrick Melrose writhes in great spasms of disappointment the whole time. I would guess that none of this is something us readers will be shedding big jewel-like tears over. Oh oh oh, this huge French house should be mine, mine mine - I mean ours, dear. He is already rich enough, on what planet should he be even richer?
We have to read Mother’s Milk for something other than an interesting plot or engaging sympathetic characters or unusual subjects. It’s the last place you would look.
Instead we get unremitting and highly, highly entertaining nastiness. Reviewers call this novel venomous, caustic, sardonic, scathing and ascerbic, and I do not disagree. Untrammeled self-loathing male arrogance has rarely been more elegantly spewed forth :
He could live without her as long as he knew that she couldn’t live without him. That was the deal the furiously weak made between their permanent disappointment and their temporary consolation.
If he had one thing to say to the world, it was this : never, never have a child without first getting a reliable mistress.
He envied the male spider who was eaten straight after fertilizing the female, rather than consumed bit by bit like his human counterpart.
Very occasionally our author allows Patrick’s wife one of these one-liners. They are staying in a motel and she is thinking about its delights :
And a machine down the corridor whose shuddering ejaculations of ice reminded her unwillingly of the state of her marriage
It’s a shame we didn’t get to the part where she kicks out this drunken motormouth Olympic gold standard self-pitier.
3.5 stars for all the great you-can’t-say-that! moments.
June 29, 2012
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 You Die. So, there must be something here.
I am glad I persevered. This is a strangely beautiful book.
It's about the effect of mothers to their children. All mothers are human being and they are different from each other. There are two types of mothers here: the one who gives everything away and the one who keeps everything to herself. In the center of these mothers is the Melrose family. The father, Patrick is the son of the mother who gives everything away. This mother is even thinking of giving their house to a shaman whose spirituality has affected the her in her dying days. Patrick hates his mother so he channels that hate to his wife, Mary by having a mistress. Mary in turn, retreats and distances herself from Patrick by focusing her full attention to his sons, the 5-y/o Robert and the newly born, Thomas. The other mother is Mary's, this is the mother that keeps everything to herself and Mary also hates her so she makes sure to be the opposite: a very loving mother to her sons despite being a distant wife.
The plot is not really new. In fact, I prefer the emotion and the style of a similar book, the one I read and enjoyed last year, Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved. However, there is no death here so there is no earth-shattering event that turns the world of the characters upside down. Everything seems to be hinged in subtlety and the selling proposition is really on how clever small children can be compared to their parents.
Those narration of the 5-y/o Robert is something that should be the reason why this book is a must-read. In real life, according to Wiki, the author of this book, Edward St. Aubyn, was raped by a male relative when he was a child. Prior to this novel, he wrote an autobiographical trilogy, Some Hope where he wrote the details on this rape experience. That book is said to be written with strong paternal viewpoint. This book, Mother's Milk balances the view as it has strong maternal viewpoint.
I think the reason why St. Aubyn gave strong intellectual adult viewpoint to the 5-y/o Robert was to show that a small boy can have the awareness of an adult and that any child maltreatment or molestation has a strong effect to the life and personality of a person. Those sad experiences will stay with the wrong child as long as he or she lives.
If are a writer, and you'd like to see a strange (because it challenges conventions) use of POV, give this book a try.
I am glad I persevered. This is a strangely beautiful book.
It's about the effect of mothers to their children. All mothers are human being and they are different from each other. There are two types of mothers here: the one who gives everything away and the one who keeps everything to herself. In the center of these mothers is the Melrose family. The father, Patrick is the son of the mother who gives everything away. This mother is even thinking of giving their house to a shaman whose spirituality has affected the her in her dying days. Patrick hates his mother so he channels that hate to his wife, Mary by having a mistress. Mary in turn, retreats and distances herself from Patrick by focusing her full attention to his sons, the 5-y/o Robert and the newly born, Thomas. The other mother is Mary's, this is the mother that keeps everything to herself and Mary also hates her so she makes sure to be the opposite: a very loving mother to her sons despite being a distant wife.
The plot is not really new. In fact, I prefer the emotion and the style of a similar book, the one I read and enjoyed last year, Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved. However, there is no death here so there is no earth-shattering event that turns the world of the characters upside down. Everything seems to be hinged in subtlety and the selling proposition is really on how clever small children can be compared to their parents.
Those narration of the 5-y/o Robert is something that should be the reason why this book is a must-read. In real life, according to Wiki, the author of this book, Edward St. Aubyn, was raped by a male relative when he was a child. Prior to this novel, he wrote an autobiographical trilogy, Some Hope where he wrote the details on this rape experience. That book is said to be written with strong paternal viewpoint. This book, Mother's Milk balances the view as it has strong maternal viewpoint.
I think the reason why St. Aubyn gave strong intellectual adult viewpoint to the 5-y/o Robert was to show that a small boy can have the awareness of an adult and that any child maltreatment or molestation has a strong effect to the life and personality of a person. Those sad experiences will stay with the wrong child as long as he or she lives.
If are a writer, and you'd like to see a strange (because it challenges conventions) use of POV, give this book a try.
August 2, 2022
Another five star read from Edward St. Aubyn
It 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 2000/01. Patrick is now married with two young children.
Having skewered the English aristocracy, drug taking, and luxury's disappointment, here Edward St. Aubyn trains his unerring, coruscating laser on bourgeois family life and in particular the psychological and material legacies passed down through the generations. There's vicious, acerbic wit, dark satire, and psychodrama aplenty.
I am pressing straight on with At Last, the fifth and final book. I cannot wait to find out how the tale concludes and also to reflect on the experience.
5/5
* The five Patrick Melrose novels have been published in two separate volumes: Patrick Melrose Volume 1: Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope (1-3) + Patrick Melrose Volume 2: Mother's Milk and At Last (4&5)
It 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 2000/01. Patrick is now married with two young children.
Having skewered the English aristocracy, drug taking, and luxury's disappointment, here Edward St. Aubyn trains his unerring, coruscating laser on bourgeois family life and in particular the psychological and material legacies passed down through the generations. There's vicious, acerbic wit, dark satire, and psychodrama aplenty.
I am pressing straight on with At Last, the fifth and final book. I cannot wait to find out how the tale concludes and also to reflect on the experience.
5/5
* The five Patrick Melrose novels have been published in two separate volumes: Patrick Melrose Volume 1: Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope (1-3) + Patrick Melrose Volume 2: Mother's Milk and At Last (4&5)
May 30, 2024
Мені ця серія не дуже подобається, трішки нуднувато буває, а ще мені не дуже подобається читати про зраду, так тобі може не вистачати сексу, то розлучиться, а та ревність щодо їхніх дітей, коли вона витрачає на них свій час, а не на нього, то в мене в голові постійно йде думка, навіщо було тоді народжувати 2, якщо вам і так не вистачало інтимного життя коли був лише 1. Там був один момент, коли вони були на пляжі якомусь, і де Патрік дивився на дівчину, і уявляв як він трахає(іншого слова не має), а потім одразу перемикається на офіціантку там теж такі думки були, просто в мене відчуття, що його взагалі крім сексу нічого не цікавить.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 31, 2013
#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 and further behind.
#5, At Last, isn't a high priority, but I do need to see where Patrick ends up.
"Aren't you reading rather too much into those two words?" "What else is there to do but read too much into things?" said Patrick breezily. "What a poor, thin, dull world we'd live in if we didn't. Besides, is it possible? There's always more meaning than we can lay our hands on."
#5, At Last, isn't a high priority, but I do need to see where Patrick ends up.
January 6, 2021
4.5*
Labai patiko. Skaičiau ne iš eilės, būtent šita buvo 2006 metų Bookerio shortliste
Sarkastiškas ir tuo pačiu labai liūdnas tas Patrikas. Skaitysiu visas
Labai patiko. Skaičiau ne iš eilės, būtent šita buvo 2006 metų Bookerio shortliste
Sarkastiškas ir tuo pačiu labai liūdnas tas Patrikas. Skaitysiu visas
February 18, 2018
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 out the perspective beyond Patrick himself, we are also in the heads of the self-consciously precocious children (let go of expectations of realism here and go with it), and Patrick's wife, Mary. If he's struggling with how to be a father, her experience of motherhood is a fitting parallel:, and the corrosive spotlight of St.Aubyn's intellect is firmly set on the bourgeois family, especially its inheritances, both material and psychological, and its aptly-named bloodlines.
Offsetting the bleakness is the distinctive style and sharpness of the writing. With Patrick drinking again and emotionally adrift once more, I wonder where the last book will take him.
Widening out the perspective beyond Patrick himself, we are also in the heads of the self-consciously precocious children (let go of expectations of realism here and go with it), and Patrick's wife, Mary. If he's struggling with how to be a father, her experience of motherhood is a fitting parallel:, and the corrosive spotlight of St.Aubyn's intellect is firmly set on the bourgeois family, especially its inheritances, both material and psychological, and its aptly-named bloodlines.
Offsetting the bleakness is the distinctive style and sharpness of the writing. With Patrick drinking again and emotionally adrift once more, I wonder where the last book will take him.
January 1, 2026
частина про нове життя, яке не приносить полегшення, про внутрішній монолог, про порожнечу і агресію
August 21, 2013
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 like killing myself. Think Evelyn Waugh without anyone having the thinnest shred of redemptive goodness.
Mother's Milk - If you think of giving up before this one, don't. Someone said to me that you think you read the others for themselves until you come to this one, and see that all the others are for this one. I think that's true. This one is the pinnacle. This isn't a series, it's an ascent.
Edward St Aubyn
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 like killing myself. Think Evelyn Waugh without anyone having the thinnest shred of redemptive goodness.
Mother's Milk - If you think of giving up before this one, don't. Someone said to me that you think you read the others for themselves until you come to this one, and see that all the others are for this one. I think that's true. This one is the pinnacle. This isn't a series, it's an ascent.
Edward St Aubyn
August 27, 2012
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 books make the coming to peace of this one credible. It's very moving and true and not at all sentimental. At times, this volume gets a little expository....there are moments in all the books, including this one, where you have to put your finger between the pages and hold your head down because you're laughing to hard to read a thing...in time, when I've recovered, I'll go back and read all four with more care. Can't recommend these enough
December 30, 2023
الجزء الرابع وما قبل الأخير من سلسلة "باتريك ميلروز"، جاء بعنوان "حليب الأم" ومن العنوان أصبحنا على دراية وفهم بالمدخل إلى هذه الرواية، وعلى الأخص، لو كنت قارئ للسلسلة من البداية.
فعلاقة "باتريك" مع الماضي لا تزال مُعقدة حتى بعد فهم وتقبل معاناته ومآسأته التي مر بها مع والده، فلا يزال هناك بعض التعقيدات التي لم تُحل، تتشكل في صورة أمه، التي تركته ليُعاني، وتجولت في مختلف البلاد لتنشر السعادة وتقوم بعمل "الخير"، في نفس الوقت الذي كان يحتاج فيه باتريك "الخير"، أو كما يقول الاسم "حليب الأم"، فما الذي سيحدث عندما تنقلب الأمور وتحتاج "إلينور" إلى "باتريك"؟
في نفس الوقت نقفز فترة زمنية كبيرة بعض الشيء لنجد أن باتريك قد تزوج بل وأنجب طفلين هما: "روبرت" و"توماس"، وفي ظل التخبط الذي يُعانيه، والخوف والمسئوليات التي وقعت على عاتقه، يُحاول باتريك أن يهرب منها دون الوقوع في خطر الإدمان مرة أخرى، فليجأ إلى الجنس، الكثير منه، ويُعيد علاقته بـ"جوليا"، بعد فشل زواجها، فهل ستكون علاقته الجنسية مع "جوليا" كافية؟ كافية لأن تكون حياته متوازنة؟ الجميل في هذه السلسلة ودراسة شخصية "باتريك ميلروز" والمجتمع الإنجليزي من خلاله؛ أنها تُحاول القول ما بين السطور أن أياً كان نوع الإلهاء الذي تدمنه لكي يجعلك تتوقف عن التفكير في ماضيك/مُعضلتك لن يكون كافياً مهما كان شكله أو لذته في إسكان الأوجاع البشرية والآلام التي لا تنتهي.
أصبحت "إلينور" مريضة للغاية، تأكل وتتحرك بواسطة مساعدة، الخرف أكل عقلها، وأصبحت على بعد خطوات بسيطة من الموت، ولكن من قال أنك عندما تريد الموت يُريدك؟ يقع على عاتق "باتريك" الاهتمام بأمه التي تركته عندما كان في حاجة إليها، ورغم أفعالها الحمقاء -حتى في تلك السن- التي تجعلها تُفضل غرباء على أفراد عائلتها كما وصف "باتريك" لا يزال عليه أن يهتم، بل ويشعر بالشفقة أيضاً!
ختاماً..
لا يزال جزئي المُفضل هو "نبأ مشؤوم" لعدة أسباب قد ذكرتها في المر��جعات السابقة، ولكن هذا الجزء هام على مدى الصورة الأكبر، ودليل على أن السلسلة لم تترك شيء -حتى الآن- بلا نهاية أو خاتمة، أتمنى أن يركز الجزء الأخير على مسئولياته كأب، فهو في هذا الجزء كان أباً سيئاً بل ورأى بعينيه أنه يتجه ليكون نسخة من والده الذي بغضه كثيراً، وإلى "وأخيراً" نتجه.
October 30, 2023
"إنَّ الأطفال مخلوقات عظيمة. يمكن اختلاق أي شيء تقريباً عنهم لأنهم لن يُقدّموا ردّاً على ذلك.."
الجزء الرابع من خماسية باتريك ميلروز والذي يبدأ بمولد طفل جديد وحياة جديدة مختلفة عما سبق من حياة باتريك المعتادة ما بين إدمان وحيرة وعذاب.. نرى حياة "روبرت" و "توماس" الولدين الذي سيأخذ كل منهم من طباع باتريك بطريقة ما..
وَصَف الكاتب في بداية الرواية مشهد الولادة وصف أكثر من رائع واحببته كثيرًا، ولكن هذا أكثر الأجزاء مللاً في الخماسية ولم أفهم لماذا كل هذا الحشو بلا هدف..
أتمنى الجزء الأخير يكون أفضل من ذلك الجزء
الجزء الرابع من خماسية باتريك ميلروز والذي يبدأ بمولد طفل جديد وحياة جديدة مختلفة عما سبق من حياة باتريك المعتادة ما بين إدمان وحيرة وعذاب.. نرى حياة "روبرت" و "توماس" الولدين الذي سيأخذ كل منهم من طباع باتريك بطريقة ما..
وَصَف الكاتب في بداية الرواية مشهد الولادة وصف أكثر من رائع واحببته كثيرًا، ولكن هذا أكثر الأجزاء مللاً في الخماسية ولم أفهم لماذا كل هذا الحشو بلا هدف..
أتمنى الجزء الأخير يكون أفضل من ذلك الجزء
August 29, 2014
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!
October 11, 2024
Четверта книга якось одразу вибилася зі звичного ряду.
Патрік став батьком. Двічі. Це вже перевертає все догори дригом, бо три попередні книги якось до цього не готували.
Патрік наче дорослішає, але вже десь на третині оповіді ми бачимо ту ж саму травмовану дитину.
Ми бачимо як дитячі травми руйнують шлюб, як ретравмують наступне покоління.
Ну і остання глава просто винос мозку. Якщо це затравка на останню книгу, то вау.
Патрік став батьком. Двічі. Це вже перевертає все догори дригом, бо три попередні книги якось до цього не готували.
Патрік наче дорослішає, але вже десь на третині оповіді ми бачимо ту ж саму травмовану дитину.
Ми бачимо як дитячі травми руйнують шлюб, як ретравмують наступне покоління.
Ну і остання глава просто винос мозку. Якщо це затравка на останню книгу, то вау.
May 31, 2011
This is the first novel I've read by Edward St Aubyn but was captivated by his style and wit. Although Mother's Milk is one of a series of stories, there is no need to have read the predecessors as it stands on its own perfectly. The title refers to the relationships between mothers and their children, and these bonds are analysed and explored throughout the novel.
The writer veers between perspectives, writing from the viewpoints of several of the novel's characters. My greatest enjoyment came from the characterisations and perspectives of his two young sons, even when Robert (the elder of the two) is looking back to his own birth at the start of the story. The adults manage to mess up their own lives and those of their children, but Patrick's and Mary's sons (the third generation) exhibit a wisdom beyond their years and leave the reader with the optimistic hope that they may break away from the backgrounds imposed on them by their parents. The title of the novel, and its plot, stresses that the relationships between mothers and their children are influenced and informed by nurture and not by nature; even the professional middle classes can be dysfunctional in spite of the privileges and advantages they enjoy. I particularly enjoyed the way in which death is referred to at the beginning, although it is the opposite of what is happening, and this contrasts with the theme of death that occupies the story's end, especially as to do nothing is still to do something.
The writer veers between perspectives, writing from the viewpoints of several of the novel's characters. My greatest enjoyment came from the characterisations and perspectives of his two young sons, even when Robert (the elder of the two) is looking back to his own birth at the start of the story. The adults manage to mess up their own lives and those of their children, but Patrick's and Mary's sons (the third generation) exhibit a wisdom beyond their years and leave the reader with the optimistic hope that they may break away from the backgrounds imposed on them by their parents. The title of the novel, and its plot, stresses that the relationships between mothers and their children are influenced and informed by nurture and not by nature; even the professional middle classes can be dysfunctional in spite of the privileges and advantages they enjoy. I particularly enjoyed the way in which death is referred to at the beginning, although it is the opposite of what is happening, and this contrasts with the theme of death that occupies the story's end, especially as to do nothing is still to do something.
October 23, 2018
"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 irony is that the premier cru, the first hit, is much the most toxic. Poor old top shaman is reeling and sweating, trying to get all the poison out, whereas a few damaged livers later, the urine is harmless without having lost its hallucinogenic power. Such is the human attachment to status, that people will sacrifice for their peace of mind and their precious time in order to pickaxe their way towards what turns out to be a thoroughly poisonous experience."
- - -
This book had just as much biting, incisive writing as the first three books, but it felt much more aimless, at least in the middle. The beginning of the book actually starts out from the perspective of a newborn baby, and frankly, I thought that part was genius. The POV is from Patrick's son, and we see him grow up from inside his head. It's really hard to describe, and it was super weird, but it also worked really well.
The part that really got me, though, which was the same thing that got me during this episode of the TV mini-series, is that Patrick and his crisis largely doesn't interest me. Patrick and his wife Mary are struggling to overcome the weights of their past, and Patrick is not succeeding very well. His children are extremely intelligent, and his wife retreats into motherhood as an antidote to Patrick's misery, which threatens to bring everyone around them down. He can't let anything go. And meanwhile, his mother (with whom he has a conflicted relationship anyway), is dying and in nursing care, and her descent into a second infancy, but one full of misery and pain, only exacerbates his issues.
The quote I've excerpted above is one that Patrick throws out at Seamus, the charlatan who has taken his mother's wealth in the guise of charity, and it's a powerful commentary on how both Patrick and St. Aubyn feel about humanity's fucked up priorities. But that moment is just one stuck in the middle of the book, which is largely made up of Patrick's family life falling apart, as he teeters on the verge of fucking up his sons, not the way he was fucked up by his father, but in a different way altogether, because he can't get over his past.
I'm very ready for the promised catharsis of the last book.
[3.5 stars]
"I didn't know that," said Seamus flatly.
"I thought it was your special field," said Patrick, surprised. "Anyhow, the irony is that the premier cru, the first hit, is much the most toxic. Poor old top shaman is reeling and sweating, trying to get all the poison out, whereas a few damaged livers later, the urine is harmless without having lost its hallucinogenic power. Such is the human attachment to status, that people will sacrifice for their peace of mind and their precious time in order to pickaxe their way towards what turns out to be a thoroughly poisonous experience."
- - -
This book had just as much biting, incisive writing as the first three books, but it felt much more aimless, at least in the middle. The beginning of the book actually starts out from the perspective of a newborn baby, and frankly, I thought that part was genius. The POV is from Patrick's son, and we see him grow up from inside his head. It's really hard to describe, and it was super weird, but it also worked really well.
The part that really got me, though, which was the same thing that got me during this episode of the TV mini-series, is that Patrick and his crisis largely doesn't interest me. Patrick and his wife Mary are struggling to overcome the weights of their past, and Patrick is not succeeding very well. His children are extremely intelligent, and his wife retreats into motherhood as an antidote to Patrick's misery, which threatens to bring everyone around them down. He can't let anything go. And meanwhile, his mother (with whom he has a conflicted relationship anyway), is dying and in nursing care, and her descent into a second infancy, but one full of misery and pain, only exacerbates his issues.
The quote I've excerpted above is one that Patrick throws out at Seamus, the charlatan who has taken his mother's wealth in the guise of charity, and it's a powerful commentary on how both Patrick and St. Aubyn feel about humanity's fucked up priorities. But that moment is just one stuck in the middle of the book, which is largely made up of Patrick's family life falling apart, as he teeters on the verge of fucking up his sons, not the way he was fucked up by his father, but in a different way altogether, because he can't get over his past.
I'm very ready for the promised catharsis of the last book.
[3.5 stars]
April 30, 2010
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 have vulgar gardens! Americans support a nuclear Israel! Americans are always suing each other over the littlest inconveniences! American hotels have machines that “ejaculate” ice-cubes! (I’m not sure why this last one is bad). They'll love it in The New Statesman.
"'our water tank burst and flooded the apartment downstairs. Our neighbours are suing us, so we're suing the plumbers who only put the tank in last year. The plumbers are suing the tank company for defective design. And the residents are suing the building, even though they're all on vacation, because the water was cut off for two days instead of two hours, which caused them a lot of mental stress in Tuscany and Nantucket.'
'Gosh,' said Mary. 'What’s wrong with mopping up and getting a new water tank?'
'That is so English,' said Sally, delighted by Mary's quaint stoicism."
The first part would be funny if I didn't think a Guardian reader was delighting friends with this as a "true story". The second part is only forgivable if St. Aubyn isn't English.
"'I was just telling your parents they ought to take you to see the real Father Christmas,' said, Jilly, dishing out the food. ‘Concorde from Gatwick in the morning, up to Lapland,"
Hadn’t Jilly heard of the Paris crash?! Concorde was grounded for the rest of 2000.
"'Raggie with a label,' he sobbed. She handed him a Harrington square with the label still on it. A raggie without a label was not just unconsoling, but doubly upsetting because of its tantalizing resemblance to the ones which still had labels."
I really don't know what a Harrington square is. Did I miss something?
"Illness had blown her apart like a dandelion clock. He had wondered if he would end up like that, a few seeds stuck to a broken stem."
"Whereas the London parks he knew seemed to insist on nature, Central Park insisted on recreation."
"'our water tank burst and flooded the apartment downstairs. Our neighbours are suing us, so we're suing the plumbers who only put the tank in last year. The plumbers are suing the tank company for defective design. And the residents are suing the building, even though they're all on vacation, because the water was cut off for two days instead of two hours, which caused them a lot of mental stress in Tuscany and Nantucket.'
'Gosh,' said Mary. 'What’s wrong with mopping up and getting a new water tank?'
'That is so English,' said Sally, delighted by Mary's quaint stoicism."
The first part would be funny if I didn't think a Guardian reader was delighting friends with this as a "true story". The second part is only forgivable if St. Aubyn isn't English.
"'I was just telling your parents they ought to take you to see the real Father Christmas,' said, Jilly, dishing out the food. ‘Concorde from Gatwick in the morning, up to Lapland,"
Hadn’t Jilly heard of the Paris crash?! Concorde was grounded for the rest of 2000.
"'Raggie with a label,' he sobbed. She handed him a Harrington square with the label still on it. A raggie without a label was not just unconsoling, but doubly upsetting because of its tantalizing resemblance to the ones which still had labels."
I really don't know what a Harrington square is. Did I miss something?
"Illness had blown her apart like a dandelion clock. He had wondered if he would end up like that, a few seeds stuck to a broken stem."
"Whereas the London parks he knew seemed to insist on nature, Central Park insisted on recreation."
June 14, 2016
If you want to sum up Mother's Milk in a few lines, then the first stanza of Philip Larkin's This Be the Verse does a great job:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Mother's Milk is ultimately about parenthood but things go much deeper than that.
Patrick Melrose is now forty and entering a mid life crisis. He has the responsibility of being a father and considering that he was the product of a bad upbringing he is worried that he'll transfer his psychological problems to his elder son. Not only that his wife is way too preoccupied with his newborn son so pay any attention to him. More problems arise as his over philanthropic mother (another result of awful parentage) is giving her fortune to a crook so that he can transfer their vacation house into a new age foundation. More problems?Patrick has to deal with an overly selfish mother inlaw.
St. Aubyn is the master of inner thoughts and feelings, us readers can feel for patrick's confusions and strife and yet St. Aubyn is also great at comic timing, the first half of the book had me giggling. This is a complex novel about feelings, parenthood.Enmeshed in the plot is a commentary on the moneyed class of Britain, American culture as seen through the eyes of a European and the ethics of assisted suicide.
Stuffed with memorable characters and scenes, Mother's Milk is a perfect novel about how our parents shape our psychological milieu and whether we can free ourselves from it.
December 7, 2020
The fourth in this magnificent series. The earlier entries cycled through in turn innocence shattered, self destructive rage, and weary humour. The fourth finds Patrick Melrose in middle age and the central theme an unedifying self pitying whine of bitterness. Perhaps the only redeeming quality left is accuracy. Still very very good despite the jarring false note the hyper preciousness the author burdens the children with strikes.
February 2, 2019
2.5 ⭐️
January 22, 2018
Mother’s Milk, the fourth of five Patrick Melrose novels, opens with a graphic description of the birth of Patrick’s first child: “Why had they pretended to kill him when he was born?”
What a brilliant, brilliant novel about the complicated relationship between mothers and their children. Author Maggie O’Farrell describes the Melrose novels as being ‘at once epic and intimate’, and I think this one best covers that range. It’s specifically about the toxic and perpetually disappointed relationship that Patrick has with his own mother Eleanor, but it’s also about the legacy of parenting - and how we are helpless, in a sense, to do anything other than respond to our own models. So Patrick is married to the fiercely, obsessively maternal Mary - whose all-consuming devotion to her two sons feels like another form of abandonment to her husband. Mary is responding to her own mother Kettle, who was both selfish and absent as a mother. And Patrick’s love for his mother’s French home Saint Lazaire - repository of childhood memories, and assumed inheritance - becomes another source of maternal treachery when Eleanor decides to gift it to a ‘Transpersonal Foundation’ and thus disinherit her son. Much of the novel is spent on Patrick’s emotional tenterhooks: he is desperate for his demented, paralysed mother to die, but she cannot even release Patrick (or herself) from the bonds of life. The novel makes a very neat life cycle, but in the end it’s an arrested one: just like Patrick’s emotional state. And the mother’s milk? Bitterness, gall, betrayal - and in this novel, the copious amounts of alcohol which have become Patrick’s latest destructive coping mechanism.
This is one of the funniest of the Melrose novels, but the humour is often painful. Still, Patrick’s two clever and articulate sons do add some comic relief. As ever, I was bowled over by the author’s stylish, intelligent writing - even when he is probing his psychological wounds.
“Mary was such a devoted mother because she knew what it felt like not to have one. Patrick also knew what it felt like, and as a former beneficiary of Mary’s maternal overdrive, he sometimes had to remind himself that he wasn’t an infant anymore, to argue that there were real children in the house, not yet horror-trained; he sometimes had to give himself a good talking-to. Nevertheless, he waited in vain for the maturing effects of parenthood. Being surrounded by children only brought him closer to his own childishness. He felt like a man who dreads leaving harbour, knowing that under the deck of his impressive yacht there is only a dirty little twin-stroke engine: fearing and wanting, fearing and wanting.”
What a brilliant, brilliant novel about the complicated relationship between mothers and their children. Author Maggie O’Farrell describes the Melrose novels as being ‘at once epic and intimate’, and I think this one best covers that range. It’s specifically about the toxic and perpetually disappointed relationship that Patrick has with his own mother Eleanor, but it’s also about the legacy of parenting - and how we are helpless, in a sense, to do anything other than respond to our own models. So Patrick is married to the fiercely, obsessively maternal Mary - whose all-consuming devotion to her two sons feels like another form of abandonment to her husband. Mary is responding to her own mother Kettle, who was both selfish and absent as a mother. And Patrick’s love for his mother’s French home Saint Lazaire - repository of childhood memories, and assumed inheritance - becomes another source of maternal treachery when Eleanor decides to gift it to a ‘Transpersonal Foundation’ and thus disinherit her son. Much of the novel is spent on Patrick’s emotional tenterhooks: he is desperate for his demented, paralysed mother to die, but she cannot even release Patrick (or herself) from the bonds of life. The novel makes a very neat life cycle, but in the end it’s an arrested one: just like Patrick’s emotional state. And the mother’s milk? Bitterness, gall, betrayal - and in this novel, the copious amounts of alcohol which have become Patrick’s latest destructive coping mechanism.
This is one of the funniest of the Melrose novels, but the humour is often painful. Still, Patrick’s two clever and articulate sons do add some comic relief. As ever, I was bowled over by the author’s stylish, intelligent writing - even when he is probing his psychological wounds.
“Mary was such a devoted mother because she knew what it felt like not to have one. Patrick also knew what it felt like, and as a former beneficiary of Mary’s maternal overdrive, he sometimes had to remind himself that he wasn’t an infant anymore, to argue that there were real children in the house, not yet horror-trained; he sometimes had to give himself a good talking-to. Nevertheless, he waited in vain for the maturing effects of parenthood. Being surrounded by children only brought him closer to his own childishness. He felt like a man who dreads leaving harbour, knowing that under the deck of his impressive yacht there is only a dirty little twin-stroke engine: fearing and wanting, fearing and wanting.”
May 17, 2013
He closed his eyes and let the pool-side inferno dissipate. After a few hours of other people, he had to get the pile-up of impressions out of him one way or another; by doing impersonations, or working out how things worked, or just trying to empty his mind. Otherwise the impressions built up to a critical density and he felt as if he was going to explode.
Sometimes, when he was lying in bed, a single word like 'fear' or 'infinity' flicked the roof off the house and sucked him up into the night, past the stars that had been bent into bears and ploughs, and into a pure darkness where everything was annihilated except the feeling of annihilation. As the little capsule of his intelligence disintegrated, he went on feeling its burning edges, its fragmenting hull, and when the capsule flew apart he was the bits flying apart, and when the bits turned into atoms he was the flying apart itself, growing stronger instead of fading, like an evil energy defying the running out of everything and feeding on waste, and soon enough the whole of space was a waste-fueled rush and there was no place in it for a human mind; but there he was, still feeling.
...
ALSO:
Illness had blown her apart like a dandelion clock.
Sometimes, when he was lying in bed, a single word like 'fear' or 'infinity' flicked the roof off the house and sucked him up into the night, past the stars that had been bent into bears and ploughs, and into a pure darkness where everything was annihilated except the feeling of annihilation. As the little capsule of his intelligence disintegrated, he went on feeling its burning edges, its fragmenting hull, and when the capsule flew apart he was the bits flying apart, and when the bits turned into atoms he was the flying apart itself, growing stronger instead of fading, like an evil energy defying the running out of everything and feeding on waste, and soon enough the whole of space was a waste-fueled rush and there was no place in it for a human mind; but there he was, still feeling.
...
ALSO:
Illness had blown her apart like a dandelion clock.
April 16, 2020
I’m giving this one six stars.
November 20, 2021
Una stella e mezza
Se la storia con cui St. Aubyn ammorba i lettori per ben cinque tomi, e oltre novecento pagine, fosse stata condensata in duecento, forse staremmo parlando di un gran libro. Purtroppo l’Autore ha scelto di non risparmiarci nulla del suo faticoso percorso di riscatto da una famiglia orrenda e dalla sua dipendenza da droghe e alcol. Paradossalmente, però, l’unico personaggio di cui rimane traccia nella memoria, è il peggiore e il più laido di tutti: il padre. Non so fino a che punto St. Aubyn ne sarebbe contento.
Se la storia con cui St. Aubyn ammorba i lettori per ben cinque tomi, e oltre novecento pagine, fosse stata condensata in duecento, forse staremmo parlando di un gran libro. Purtroppo l’Autore ha scelto di non risparmiarci nulla del suo faticoso percorso di riscatto da una famiglia orrenda e dalla sua dipendenza da droghe e alcol. Paradossalmente, però, l’unico personaggio di cui rimane traccia nella memoria, è il peggiore e il più laido di tutti: il padre. Non so fino a che punto St. Aubyn ne sarebbe contento.
February 8, 2019
Somewhat mixed feelings: there are moments of sheer emotional brilliance and caustic wit here, but the literary ventriloquism is only partly successful for me and the "fat Americans on the plane" scene was lazy and unoriginal in its misanthropy and fatphobia.
But when it's good, it is good. I look forward to the last volume.
But when it's good, it is good. I look forward to the last volume.
November 30, 2021
The fourth novel in the Patrick Melrose series, and a re-read - although I didn't remember it at all from before. And... I don't know. I did read this after In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut which I loved, so firstly, I did have a severe book hangover. But... what was it all about? Well, yes, mothers and whether they fuck you up. (I think St. Aubyn's answer is, they do.) There are fickle mothers, selfish mothers, unselfish mothers... none of them very believable. I put the book down with a groan. But then I make myself pick it up and if I forget this is supposed to be novel with a narrative, I fall again for how St. Aubyn makes Patrick think, what he thinks about, what his children (who are really babies) think about (surely purposefully unbelievable). And then there were thoughts about being a mother that I completely agreed with.
3.5 stars.
3.5 stars.
August 9, 2020
Ευκολοδιάβαστο και χαριτωμένο,χωρίς να έχει αυτό το κάτι που θα το μετατρέψει σε ιδιαίτερο.
3⭐
3⭐
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